Amorous Spider-Man 1: Home on the Range
by Kazakh Doom
Summary: In the American Wild West, Liz Allan and May Reilly are both in witness protection. New York weeps the apparent murder of Spider-Man at the hands of the Sacrilegious Six...while in secret, Spider-Man, still alive, is on a secret mission to protect his four favorite hooters-um, "two favorite women..."
1. Chapter 1

This is Queens. The year is 1869. Most of the rest of the United States is still recovering from the Civil War. Lucky for New York, no one ever saw a single bullet or cannonball of battle.

The same can't be said for the Avengers. They're now less than half as strong as before. What's worse, Iron Man was slain by rebel mercs somewhere over western Texas. There are many in New York who miss him.

This is a pizzeria. The family who runs it is ex-Italian. In a few decades, New York will soon have more Italians than it wants. But for now, let's just say that most people who live here are _more_ than grateful that Grant won the last presidential election...

A man in a suit stands near a lectern at the front door. He's not what he appears.

A beautiful brunette woman and her nephew enter. They ask their host for a table for two. He smiles, and gladly accommodates for them. She orders wine; he orders pop.

The nephew, a rather perceptive one, notices the medallion that hangs from the host's neck. It's of a Star of David and a crescent moon that spins around the hexagram on a swivel that runs through the hexagram's top point, and between its two bottom ones. The star is gold, and the moon is silver. A twin emerald and sapphire hang within the medallion...

The woman is May Reilly. Her name was once May Parker...but that was back when she wasn't a widow.

The boy is Peter Parker. And unlike most boys his age-he would think-he's been robbed of a father three times. Tony Stark was like a father and a mentor to him. And he died when Iron Man's armor was splintered.

Alas, Peter's also been robbed of a love. In this case, her name was Liz Allan. Peter waited forever to ask her out. And on the night he finally got to go out with her, duty called...and now she must think the worst of him.

Thankfully, he's not the worst she can think of. Her father was a rebel spy, who supervised the smuggling of weapons to the Confederate Army from New York. It took a lone Avenger's efforts to stop him. Most of the other Avengers wouldn't listen to him when he tried to call for backup.

Now her father's in prison. And now she and the rest of her family are in Oregon. Peter's written to her, but she's never written back. Peter's been told that girls use their fathers as a role model for boys they should date...but this feels extreme...

Aunt May caresses Peter's arm. Peter jolts when she does. He'd never tell his aunt, but ever since a few years ago, he's had a crush on her. And at that, talking to her has never been harder to do.

Peter has the senses of a spider. The hairs go up on his arm. Peter looks around. He can't understand what the trouble is...

May brings up her nephew's love life, and asks him why he shouldn't call on Virginia Potts's daughter, Morgan. She's certain Mr. Stark wouldn't want his legacy to grow up to be lonely in love.

Peter chuckles, and points out that Morgan is the daughter of a major corporate CEO, and hence out of his league. May chuckles, and reminds him that he once lamented the same monologue about Liz.

True, Peter can't deny Morgan's breathtaking beauty. But then again, he can deny even less the even more breathtaking, and not to mention more mature and widowed, beauty of her mother, Ms. Potts...

It's alarming how much Ms. Potts and her daughter look alike. It's almost as if there's none of Mr. Stark in Morgan at all...

The meal was great. Peter and his Aunt May begin to leave. The host bids them adieu on the way out. He seems more fidgety than before...

Peter and his aunt begin the walk home. It isn't far...

Behind them, the glass walls of the pizzeria shatter. May screams. Peter covers her while diving onto the sidewalk. Shards of glass land all around them.

Peter drags his aunt to somewhere safe. He tells her to get on home while he finds somewhere to call the police.

Before May can protest, her nephew's gone. Terrified, she watches from frail cover as a supervillainess attacks the pizzeria host.

It's the She-Vulture. And she's got the host pinned. She takes his medallion in her gauntlet, and looks it over. The host looks up, terrified.

She-Vulture peers at him, through blue-green-shaded goggles. She grins...but doesn't seem very happy.

"A dead giveaway," she hisses. "I thought you'd be a little more desperate to keep a low profile."

Spider-Man arrives, and shoots webs all over She-Vulture's cybernetic wings. She turns to face the threat. The host tries to run away. She shoots an electric projectile from her gauntlet, stunning him.

Spider-Man lands, and assumes a defensive posture. She-Vulture's wings are tangled up in webbing.

"When some people who go to a pizzeria want a table," Spider-Man says, through his mask, "they usually ask nicely."

"I'm not here for the food," She-Vulture hisses. "But then, I'm rather disappointed you haven't figured that out yet!"

She heats the metal in her wings, and sheds the webbing. She spreads them. Spider-Man shoots a webbing. She deflects it with one of her wings.

She leaps, ensnares Spider-Man with cables in her gauntlets, and starts flying in circles around the pizzeria. She gets higher and higher as she goes along.

Spider-Man kicks and punches. She-Vulture keeps him subdued. From the ground, Aunt May watches, terrified. She'd be better off if she had a mind to be somewhere else.

Watching over her nephew, perhaps?

Spider-Man finally wiggles free...and starts falling. He looks around while in freefall. He deploys the wingsuit in his suit, and glides to safety. He doesn't get there.

She-Vulture broadsides him in midair, and they roll across a rooftop, grappling with one another. They continue to do so up here.

On the ground, another supervillainess attends to the stunned pizzeria host. He's coming to. She pins him down, and puts her gauntlet over his head. She generates an illusion for him.

He gapes, and looks up at the sky. From outside, Aunt May can't quite tell what's going on...

"You," the host exclaims. "How...?!"

"As my partner said before," she transforms her free arm into a scimitar, "you do a pathetic job of keeping your cover intact. It's time to dream a little dream, Ismail...of Jahannam!"

Mystira raises her transformed arm to kill the man. From behind her cover, May foolishly gasps.

Mystira looks up. Her eyes and Aunt May's meet...

Spider-Man arrives, and broadsides her. Mystira imagines herself into a bull with horns, and bucks Spider-Man across the alley.

Spider-Man lands on a kerosene tank. It leaks. Aloft, She-Vulture is still on the offensive. She aims her gauntlets at him...as he's lying in a puddle of the flammable liquid.

Mystira comes too. She sees what's about to happen, and tries to yell, to warn her partner...

But it's too late. She-Vulture's already deployed two electric darts. Mystira's feeling woozy. She tries to imagine the darts' trajectory slower-but she blinks, and accelerates them instead.

The sparks make contact with the liquid. The fires spread. They get to the rest of the tank before they get to Spider-Man. The tank's explosion commences.

Mystira spreads her arms, and imagines the explosion-and Spider-Man-frozen into place. She brings her arms together, and contracts the explosion to a size where it won't do a lot of damage.

All is calm. The tank and explosion are nowhere to be seen. Neither is Spider-Man. The partnering villainesses can go back to work.

Once again, the host tries to run. She-Vulture dive-bombs him, and shoots him many times with dual Gatling pistols. She lands, and stands over him. She smiles as she watches him die.

Once again, Mystira's gaze turns to May. She has a terrified look in her eyes.

Far away, police horns blare. They distract Mystira. She sighs, looks at May, and gives her a sinister signal. Some men from her nation would consider it sacrilegious.

She-Vulture spreads her wings, and takes off. She swoops, grabs her partner, and flies away.

"We can't just leave her," Mystira complains. "She saw what we did!"

"Now's not the time," She-Vulture reminds her. "The cops have some of the Avengers on their payroll."

Back on the ground, May looks around. Spider-Man has vanished. It looks like Mystira killed him. The Avengers aren't going to be happy to find out...and neither will Queens, once the crime rate goes up in Spider-Man's void.

The police arrive. They take away the host's corpse. They question Aunt May, and the pizzeria's other employees. Aunt May tells them that she witnessed Spider-Man's murder, and she describes the two villainesses to the cops.

No one in New York has seen the two villainesses before. But then, that's probably because neither villainess is from New York.

The cops wouldn't believe it if someone told them that there are four more where they come from. But then, they probably wouldn't want to hear it, either.

May returns to her apartment. She calls Peter's name. Peter doesn't answer. She checks every room. He's nowhere to be found. She contacts the police, and files a missing child report.

Lt. Stacy files the report. Nearby, a sketch artist draws a picture of Peter's face.

When the artist is done, Lt. Stacy looks at the picture. He grins, and admits to Ms. Reilly that her nephew has a nice face. New York knows that the beautiful girl who gets him one day will be one lucky girl.

Ms. Reilly smiles, wipes her eyes, and thanks Lt. Stacy for everything. He gives her another tissue, and promises to proliferate these sketches and post them everywhere where anyone would look for Peter.

Lt. Stacy notices how good she looks. He offers her the address of his favorite hangout, in case she ever needs a male shoulder to cry on...or a receptive ear to talk to.

Ms. Reilly thanks him, and hugs him. All around the precinct, the other cops watch, and coy-smile to themselves.

It's a grim scene in Queens, as you can see-unless maybe you're Lt. Stacy. But just wait until you find out what will soon happen in Oregon, on the other side of the American Wild West...


	2. Chapter 2

This is Oregon City. Somewhere inside its limits sits the most recently known residence of the now-fatherless Allan family.

Liz walks a country road in her bare feet. Her skin is dark. Her hair is dark. Her smile is sweet. Her cleavage is tempting. Her downblouse is even more tempting...

As she walks, she holds hands with Lowell, her new beau. She's adapting to Oregon life a lot faster than she thought she would. She thought she'd spend most of the time missing Peter, but... Oregon sure knows how to grow its boys.

Lowell often talks about his friends...who trend towards white supremacy. He and his friends have a wager going on. They think that Napoleon III is going to send France to war against the German countries. As for Lowell, he's betting that France will attack the German states, but that Germany will win the war if there is one.

Liz fixes his hair, and asks him what he's betting. Here, Lowell shows her his dog collar/torc. There's a silver medallion on it, with a wolf's head design. To Liz, it looks very...Norse Gothic.

She asks if that's Fenris Wolf. Lowell isn't sure; his grandmother passed it down to him.

They pass an old man, attending to his garden. Lowell smiles, and waves at him. He waves back. Liz and her beau wander past...but don't go far.

The old gardener wears a pendant around his neck. It looks exactly the same as the one that the host at the Queens pizzeria once wore...

Lowell stops, sighs, and looks around. It's getting late. He seems happy. That's good; Liz is too.

He tells her that he's hid something out here. He tells her to wait while he fetches it. She agrees. He runs off the path, and vanishes into the local undergrowth.

Liz waits. The sun gets lower. In the distance, wolves howl. Liz sure hopes Lowell gets back soon.

Just below the old gardener's garden, there's a sand pit. The gardener sometimes uses this sand to loosen the soil before he plants something in it.

As the gardener works, the sand becomes animated. It rises, collects, and takes the shape of a nubile girl.

In her sandy form, she settles. She turns in place, and sets her now-hollow eye sockets on the gardener nearby. The sockets narrow. She raises her left arm, and shape-shifts it into a mace.

With the sand, she grows to the height of a pole. She leans over the gardener. He still hasn't seen her. She takes a heavy breath, and raises her mace/arm...

Liz looks around. She sees the scary sand-person leaning high over the gardener. She screams. Sandgirl appears to blink her eye sockets, and look around...

The gardener finally looks up from his work. He rolls over, grabs his trowel, and points it at the sandy behemoth above.

A gunshot rings through the night. The gardener cries out in pain.

A girl closes in on the gardener, aiming a lever-action rifle at him. She reloads, and shoots him again. And again. And again. She empties the rifle at him. By the time she gets to him, he's a corpse.

She takes the medallion off his corpse, and pockets it. "I could've told you you couldn't hide forever," she tells the old man's corpse, "if only you would've stayed at home long enough to listen to us."

"We have bigger problems," Sandgirl warns the Huntress. "The girl: she's seen this."

Huntress turns her head. Her and Liz's eyes meet. Liz gasps, and runs. In a hurry, Huntress reloads her rifle.

Liz runs. She calls out Lowell's name as she does...but he doesn't react.

Sandgirl dumps herself on the dirt road. Huntress leaps onto her. Like a surfer riding a wave, Huntress rides a wave of sand as it speeds down the dirt road. They chase Liz.

Liz is only as fast as a human...if not slightly slower. Sandgirl doesn't take long to catch up with her. She follows her, but keeps her distance. Above, Huntress aims her rifle, and goes for the kill...

A mounted cop approaches. He blows his whistle.

Sandgirl stops. Huntress lowers her rifle. Sandgirl shifts her weight to the other side of her body, and flees down the other end of the dirt road. She deepens her sand around Huntress, and secures her ride.

"We can't leave her," Huntress warns.

"If the West Coast Avengers catch us," Sandgirl says, improvising lips while speeding down the road, "we'll both get left."

Back at the scene, Lowell returns, with a bighorn ram's skull. Its horns are big.

He looks around. The words "I'm back" barely escape his lips...when he sees the mounted cops, and Liz's traumatic appearance...and begins to suspect that he missed an opportunity to protect his new girlfriend.

The cops question Liz. She describes Sandgirl and Huntress to them. An ambulance arrives, via coach, and hauls the gardener's corpse away. Someone out there really enjoys killing old men who wear a particular medallion...

Back at the Allan residence, Liz is put straight to bed. Her mother attends to her. She'll be petrified for quite some time after.

But at least she'll look hotter than Mrs. Norris, Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Nearly Headless Nick in _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_...

Lowell tries to visit her several times during the night. Mrs. Allan sends him away each time.

In the middle of the night, someone knocks on the Allans' front door. Yawning, Mrs. Allan rises, and answers it.

Two minutes later, Mrs. Allan wakes her daughter. She's not asleep.

The Allans' parlor is soon the host of four visitors. The other two are secret agents from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. The man is Lance Hunter. The woman is his partner, Kate Bishop.

Agent Bishop's left a bow and quiver by the Allans' front door. And the quiver's stocked.

Agent Hunter explains that SHIELD might know who tried to attack Liz. And as a result, SHIELD is offering Liz Allan witness protection.

On the upside, Liz will get to keep her first name. On the downside, SHIELD can't guarantee they'll catch Liz's attackers...as they already suspect that they're not working alone.


	3. Chapter 3

At a Ukrainian Orthodox Church in New York, a funeral for the late Spider-Man is held. Mr. Ditkovich, the priest, leads the service.

All who come wear black. The casket isn't very big...and not to mention body-less. Instead, rubble from buildings of whose occupants Spider-Man once valiantly protected is placed inside. No one's found Spider-Man's body...or so much as his suit.

The organ plays a very slow-paced and sepulchral rendition of the Spider-Man theme song. With luck, this won't be the last time the song is played...

A black Latino boy, Miles Morales, sits in the front pew. He's just as depressed as everyone else who's arrived.

Other high-profile guests who've arrived include Dr. Strange, Mr. Fantastic, King T'Challa of Wakanda, Carol Danvers, Peter Quill, Danny Rand, Victor Alvarez, Sam Wilson, Jane Thor Foster, Clint Barton, Bobbi Morse, Johnny Storm, Crystal, Karnak, Matt Murdock, Maya Lopez, Amadeus Cho, Kitty Pryde, Bobby Drake, Mary Walker, and Frank Castle.

Professor X sits with his X-Men, who've also arrived to revere the fallen hero. Capt. Britain, Namor, Cloak, Dagger, Forge, Nightcrawler, Blink, Xorn, Emma Frost, Gambit, Darwin, Quicksilver, Deadpool, Mystique, Rachel Grey, and Daken all sit in this pew.

Farther back, other guests include Nick Fury, Harold Hogan, Alphonso Mackenzie, Elena Rodriguez, the cyborg Jemma Simmons/Deathlok, Hank McCoy, Agent J, Frank the Pug, Dinah Madani, David Lieberman, and Daisy Johnson.

Behind all of the other pews, Maria Hill and Riri Williams keep to themselves, and exchange whispers and murmurs. They think they know who killed Spider-Man...

The organ stops playing. Ned Leeds, a boy who knew Spider-Man personally, steps up to recite a eulogy.

In the pews, Happy Hogan resists the urge to bawl. Elena Rodriguez bumps his shoulder-with her prosthetic arms, which initially creeps Hogan out-and offers him a tissue.

Frank Castle smiles, and listens to the eulogy. Somehow, he always knew the kid would die a hero...

From behind her, Forge drops a tablet in Maya Lopez's lap. It translates Leeds's eulogy for her deaf needs.

Tandy Bowen and Ty Johnson embrace each other, while Bowen sobs shiny tears. Johnson subtly teleports her tears into the ocean.

Amadeus Cho tears up, but doesn't cry. Parker was like a brother to him.

Johnny Storm tears up too. Parker was even more like a brother to him.

Deadpool doesn't say a word. Everyone's impressed...

Rachel Grey resists the temptation to attract the Phoenix into the church during the funeral. But it isn't easy, and the funeral lasts a long time...

Telepathically, she hears someone's thoughts. She recognizes the thought-voice of their owner. She smiles sweetly, and rests at ease. It's always good to hear the friendly neighborhood thoughts of...

Her eyes bug. She grabs Daken's bulky arm.

"What's," Akihiro whispers, "the matter? Is the Dark Phoenix coming again?"

Rachel shakes her head, eyes still gawking. "Don't tell anyone now," she whispers, "but I don't think Parker's dead."

In the top box of the church, Virginia Potts and her daughter Morgan survey the funeral. Sitting together, they look like two parts of a blonde Russian doll.

Ms. Potts cries, and uses plenty of tissues. She remembers how much her late husband used to have faith in the Parker boy.

Morgan just sits there, like a sitting statue, wondering where her next meal will come from. She's worn a black low-cut to the funeral...which is to the delight of the funeral's most unexpected guest of all...

Morgan wears a heart-shaped pendant around her neck. And at this moment, it plays host to a little more than a gem...

Like a very small bug, Parker hangs upside down from the topside of the pendant, wearing nothing but a pair of black briefs. He's living in a real-life Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn fantasy: getting to attend his own funeral.

As you can see, Mystira's reality-warping powers didn't kill Parker. They belittled him. But for the time being, Parker isn't upset. He just can't stop staring down into the deep dark crater that makes up the space between Morgan's mountainous boobs...

He's almost tempted to swing on down into Capt. Danvers's downblouse, to see how much of his breath hers take away... But that'll have to wait; he's got some old men and their weird pendants to protect...

Aw, but surely they can wait. As Peter's aunt keeps so boldly pointing out, he never gets to spend much time with the beautiful daughter of his late mentor, after all...


	4. Chapter 4

Morgan appears quite bored with her high-quality lifestyle by now. But as long as she can rest assured that most other lives would be worse, she adapts.

She takes to the tennis court. John Jameson, a rich neighbor of hers, is on the other side of the court, "dribbling" the tennis ball, and ready for her.

Far below, stuck to the back to the skirt of Morgan's tennis outfit, Peter isn't sure how he feels about John. He is, after all, the son of a really annoying newspaper editor he can think of...

John serves. Morgan barely reacts while returning his serve. He runs across the court, and returns her swing. Morgan barely moves as she returns John's.

Morgan's got perfect balance. She's just like her mother...

Peter yawns. He almost falls off her skirt. He shoots a web, and catches himself just as he's about to fall over the hem of her skirt. It may be just a beautiful girl's ass, but it's a dangerous world up here.

Peter's had enough of this. He's in it for the thrills.

Precariously, he swings his way up to Morgan's shoulder. Once there, he swings along her dominant arm until he gets to the giant bracelet around her wrist. Once there, he waits for his chance. He doesn't have to wait very long.

He swings across the racket. The ball approaches. She shoots a web and latches himself to the ball...mere nanoseconds before Morgan swings. Before Peter knows it, he's flying across the net.

If the ball weren't spinning so much while airborne, he'd have a better view of the court. But it's just as well; flights up here don't tend to last long.

He comes down towards John. It's looking like his racket is going to hit the ball right where Peter's perched on it...

If this weren't the late 1860s, Peter would've seen the part of _Aladdin_ when he's stuck on a snowy cliff, and a tower from the palace almost pancakes him and Abu before rolling off the cliff... Alas, as fun as that illusion is, and as much as _Arabian Nights_ is liked even nowadays (and by Peter especially), Walt Disney won't be born for another three decades...

Peter studies John's racket, and steadily crawls into position. He briefly surfaces through a gap in the netting of John's catgut-right before John swings the ball back to Morgan.

And once again, Peter is airborne. It's in moments like these Peter envies most superheroes who fly...

He's so honored that Johnny Storm turned up at his funeral. Hopefully he won't take it TOO hard when he finds out Peter's alive...

Morgan sure looks great in that outfit... But as long as it lasts, Peter can't miss an opportunity to ride on a tennis ball.

The hours pass. Morning becomes afternoon.

A girl from Peter's neighborhood likes to loaf in the Starks' pool when no one's around. She really likes her black swimsuits. She's Felicia Hardy...daughter of the once-great cat burglar. Peter's seen her around his own neighborhood...alas, Felicia doesn't seem as into him as she is into her father's profession...which, of course, worries everyone else half to death, including Aunt May...

Felicia hears a noise from inside the house. Like a cat's, her ears go up. She bails off the float, swims to the poolside, leaps out, sprints away, and vanishes over the fence. Indeed, she gets more and more catlike with every move she makes.

Goddess, Felicia's sure got some mountainous boobs. If she wasn't so skittish, Peter would mountaineer them sometime...

Morgan comes outside. She takes off her towel. She wades into the water. She hoists herself onto the float, and rests her eyes.

Ah, she's in heaven now. But then, with hair that blonde, Peter's surprised that she and her mother haven't moved to Asgard...especially now that Mr. Stark isn't around to stop them anymore...

Nah, Peter shouldn't talk like that about Mr. Stark. Not after everything he did to give him his big break...

Time passes. The pool water's waves get smaller. Morgan's undercarriage is submerged. Her legs are like peaks sticking up out of the ocean.

Her navel is like a lake. The pool water in it still hasn't evaporated...for some reason.

Peter seizes the opportunity, and swims in Morgan's navel. He's very hard now.

High above, Morgan smiles happily, and takes a relaxing breath. She has no clue that she's got a stalker swimming in her navel.

Through Morgan's mountainous legs, Peter can see part of the inside of the Stark residence. Ms. Potts is in there.

Peter stops swimming, and stares at her. He's been wondering how lonely Ms. Potts has been since her husband was KIA...

As her eyes are closed, Ms. Potts bumps into a small chest. A gold coin falls off of it. She stops, as she hears it. She sees it.

She'd be a fool not to. Aunt May cherishes every gold coin she gets as if it was going out of style.

Ms. Potts bends over to collect it. Peter can see her downblouse from where he is...

Morgan's mom has got it going on. She's all Peter wants, and he's waited for so long...

The pool waves cause Morgan's float to rotate again. Peter clings to the fantastic sight of the cave in Ms. Potts's chest for as long as he can...before he can no longer see it through Morgan's mountainous thighs.

The waves are right; Morgan's closer to Peter's age. She needs a man too...although frankly, Peter doesn't get why she hasn't fallen for John yet...


	5. Chapter 5

The hours pass. Afternoon becomes evening.

Again, this'd be a great place for Peter to recall the _Dance of the Hours_ sequence from _Fantasia_... But again, Walt Disney hasn't been born yet, and once he is, he'll age forty years before _Fantasia_'s grand opening.

Ironically though, that's exactly what's playing at the ball Morgan's dancing at. _Fantasia_ might not exist...but at least _Dance of the Hours_ does, long before Disney will see their chance to canonize it in the shape of a memorable short film, with ostrich, hippo, elephant and crocodile ballet dancers...

To Morgan, it seems like guest crowds at the local balls have gotten smaller as more and more New York natives decide to settle west. She can't imagine why they'd want to; it's so dangerous out there. Aunt May would probably know that by now. Peter can't even begin to imagine the hazards that must be torturing her out there as he crawls around up here in high society, stalking Mr. Stark's little girl...

Peter wouldn't know, of course. He's just up here for the hooters-Morgan's hooters, specifically.

Morgan dances with John, during the part in Dance of the Hours when, in Fantasia, the elephant ballet dancers would dance; the "evening part" as the movie would've described it. Peter almost wishes Morgan could dance with him instead...but then he wouldn't get to stalk her like he is, so that's that.

The number ends. All applaud the band.

Norma Osborn arrives. Her hair's in a brown bob. Around her neck, she wears a silver necklace/torc with a jade pendant. Anyone who knows her knows she's bad news...and not just sexually.

I'd like to say that Norma is to Morgan as Blair Waldorf is to Serena van der Woodsen. Alas, _Gossip Girl_ won't air for another fourteen decades.

Morgan sits alone. Or rather, she FEELS alone. In reality, Peter couldn't be having more fun staring up her skirt. He's the crab Morgan doesn't know she has.

It's a vast cave up in Morgan's skirt; better than Lechuguilla, if one asks Peter. Her garters run like rope ladders up the cliffs of her thighs...

Through Lechuguilla's great opening, Peter sees Norma's legs, as she sits across the table from Morgan. Peter sure wishes he could see more of them...

Norma flaps her bob, and irritates Morgan. She reminds Morgan that Ironheart's been doing more than a great job over on the West Coast ever since Hawkeye and Mockingbird recruited her. A lot of folks over in the western states are praising her. They think she might actually be better than Iron Man was when he was alive.

Morgan doesn't cherish this at all. She secretly believes the Avengers deliberately chose someone else to succeed her father as Iron Man to irritate her.

She's so irritated, she reaches her fingers down into her skirt, and scratches her pussy...as Parker's climbing its covering. Her fingers nearly suffocate her. He quickly shoots a web, and swings over onto her garter. He should've seen this coming; then again, he should've had more romantic conversations with Morgan before Mystria and She-Vulture tried to kill him.

A boy comes over, and asks Norma to dance. She feigns a smile, and accepts. She gives Morgan a rude look, and tells her to have fun "watching Iron Men fly by." With that, she rises and attends the dance floor with the boy.

The hours pass. Evening becomes night.

It's a stormy night over the Atlantic. The wind howls, the rain pours, and lightning flashes everywhere.

Through it all, Iron Man flies. She's fast. She seems to deflect the rain as she goes along. And even though she's got a lot of electronic tech in that suit, she avoids the lightning easily.

Inside her helmet, she picks something up on her radar. A bogey approaches her from behind.

Behind, the lightning flashes more. The bogey chases her, swings its hammer, and absorbs the lightning's heat and electricity with it.

It's Ragnarok 701, an android. He may be just a practice dummy, but he's got power that might or might not have made his cyborg predecessor envious.

Ragnarok chases Iron Man. They're about an even match for each other.

Ragnarok swings his hammer, and throws it. Iron Man sees it coming, and misses it. It comes back. She swerves, and misses it again.

Once again, Ragnarok absorbs more lightning with its hammer. With its other fist, it causes a bolt of lightning to hit, and torture, Iron Man while she's in mid-flight.

Alas, the suit has merely gotten a power upgrade. Iron Man takes this opportunity, spins around, and gives Ragnarok all the power in her chest blaster. Ragnarok gets hit, and starts falling. It looks like Iron Man's won.

Triumphant, FRIDAY plots a course back to Avengers HQ for Iron Man. She heeds it, and heads back.

Alas, Ragnarok broadsides her from below. They grapple. Ragnarok's got the high ground...if not the advantage. But Iron Man's a genius; she'll surely figure something out.

At a higher altitude, Ragnarok starts icing up. Iron Man waits until it becomes a problem, and shoots Ragnarok in the head, decapitating him.

Ragnarok plummets. Victorious at last, Iron Man heads back to Avengers HQ.

She's received by Ms. Potts, Mr. Hogan, Peter Parker, and Jane Thor Foster. She lands, and takes a bow.

Ms. Potts is crying happily. Mr. Hogan's grinning proudly.

She'll never forget the look on Peter's face. At long last, she's turned his head. She didn't think she ever would. He always turns away whenever she looks at him...

"That was impressive," Jane admits, flapping her long Norse blonde hair. "Although I don't know how I'd feel about getting decapitated in real life."

Iron Man's helmet disappears. Hers is the face of Galina Nemirovsky...NOT Morgan Stark.

"I'm a mechanic," she says, in a soothing Slavic accent. "I can whip him up a new head in no time!"

Morgan wakes, and screams in rage. She hates it that the Avengers chose someone else to be Iron Man instead of her...and some Russian slut, at that...

Peter didn't see any of this, of course. But damn if he sure would've liked to know that at least he was in her dream...

Inside her covers, it's like a dark swamp in a season hotter than summer. And yet, Peter would rather be in here than on a tropical island with Liz Allan...

Morgan can't stand it, of course. Despite this, she's back to sleep in no time.

"Galina Nemirovsky," she grumbles before drifting off. "With some luck, she'll get shot down in air-to-air combat so soon, Dad will make her look like the satellite-launching amateur she is..."

Throughout the night, she snores in her bed. A bed bug's biting...even if it's just one. And at that, Peter's sure glad Blade's not down here with him. Blade loves to skin and roast his vampires like no one Peter's ever met...or hopes to meet. But then, it's a good thing Peter has no interest in Morgan's blood...unless it's menstrual blood... Blade will just have to find an actual vampire to hunt.

Morgan's bed is so comfy. Peter wonders why his Aunt May can't make a bed like hers...

But is that her bed Peter's sleeping on? It's so soft. It's alarming how Morgan's cleavage is so soft, he can't always tell it from the bedding. He sure wishes Mr. Stark would've told him more about how bed with his wife felt when he was alive...

Peter hears the door open. He starts to hide-until he remembers how dark it is in here.

He can't see, but he's sure it's Ms. Potts. She leaves almost the instant she comes. Peter knows Morgan's beauty. He can't think of many other people who'd just crack the door and leave.

And now Peter's thinking about Morgan again. If only Morgan could raise herself...

But then, what's the worse that could happen if Peter started stalking Ms. Potts anyway? It's not like she's married...anymore.


	6. Chapter 6

Dawn rises over the Stark estate. Nearby, the clock tower strikes 7.

Galina Nemirovsky flies through the neighborhood in the Iron Man suit. She lands on the front lawn of the Stark estate. Her helmet vanishes. She takes a deep breath of the fresh-cut lawn, and lets her obsidian-colored hair down.

She drops the day's newspaper on Ms. Potts' doorstep, and knocks on the door. Inside, FRIDAY acknowledges this, and notifies Ms. Potts.

Galina smiles, and gives the house some space. From up above, her head is suddenly drenched in champagne.

"THIEF," Morgan shouts down at her. "You stole my father's suit, you Cossack!"

Galina sighs, and re-materializes the helmet around her head. "Make an appointment at the salon, FRIDAY."

"Ms. Stark's condition is likely temporary," FRIDAY says, in an Irish accent. "She will soon look back at this when she's older, and laugh."

"When borzois fly, no doubt." With that, Galina takes off, and leaves Morgan to wallow in her own selfish misery.

Inside, Ms. Potts stumbles to the front door, opens it, and gathers the paper. She's sipping coffee, and in her slip.

So is Peter. And indeed, Morgan's mom IS more mature-bodied. And her boobs are astoundingly much like Morgan's-if not adultly bigger. Seriously, it's almost as if there's no Tony Stark in Morgan at all...

For the time, Ms. Potts retires to the sofa in the parlor. She drops the paper on the coffee table.

Peter obsesses over the mountainous nature of Ms. Potts' boobs...until he sees the paper's headline far below. He puts on his mask, and asks KAREN, the AI in his suit, to resolve the headline's image.

She does. Peter can read it. It says, "SACRILEGIOUS SUPERVILLAINESSES MURDER MYSTERY SENIOR IN OREGON CITY." On Peter's command, Karen helps him read the rest of the article.

High above, Ms. Potts sets her coffee down, leans back, and reads the paper. She inadvertently causes many earthquakes for Peter that do little more than make him dizzy. But he's Spider-Man; he's stuck to her chest. Nothing can knock him from his perch...except maybe her body's perspiration if she gets too hot.

The old man's name, according to public records, was Isaac Kramer. Not much was known about him, other than his place of residence and his apparent dedication to the plants in his garden.

There was a witness. Alas, the press has refused to release her name, but has commented that she's in witness protection, and can't contact her family.

There was a boy there, who identified himself as Lowell. He didn't see it happen, but he's told the press that he was concerned about the witness when he heard it had.

The witness identified the first villainess as a woman who could turn into sand, shapeshift, and make herself bigger. The locals in Oregon City are calling her Sandgirl. She also identified the second villainess as a woman who's noticeably gifted with the kinds of firearms used in hunting, and seems to carry a utility belt stocked with all the gear a hunter would need to attend to her quarries after relieving them. The Oregon City locals are calling her Huntress.

A small photo of the victim is included within the article's text. KAREN helps Peter scan it. Peter notices the medallion hanging from the victim's neck. Peter can't tell, but from where he is, it looks like an identical match to the one the host at the pizzeria wore.

This is big. Peter would hate to leave the comfort of Ms. Potts's intimates. He's waited for them for so long, after all... But Peter's got to find out if there are more men like that, and figure out how to stop those crazy villainesses from killing the rest of them.

Hours pass. Morning becomes afternoon.

This is Stark Industries. Ms. Potts is its CEO. The company provided a lot of electricity to the United States and Canada during the Civil War...and still does. On a smaller scale, it also made weapons and gear for Iron Man's Avengers and their contracting allies.

The surrounding landscape would be reminiscent of the Buchanan estate in _the Great Gatsby_. If only this weren't three decades before Scott Fitzgerald's birth...

As usual, Mr. Hogan checks Ms. Potts at the front gate. He's really slipping; he doesn't detect Peter in her anywhere at all.

Mr. Stark would laugh out loud. He was always annoyed with how good his old chauffeur got at his new job of head of security. And all around the company, he was in good company. Ms. Potts herself was a part of that company...

Ms. Potts's office has a lot of space. She could probably play tennis in it, if she was up to it.

She sits at her desk, and embraces her mail. She trashes the junk, and starts reading the first letter that matters.

Peter thinks Ms. Potts looks better in a business suit than she does in intimates. He almost feels like stripping to his briefs and worshiping her. Except he already is. He'd swing down to her pumps, except then he'd have to miss her rack...

Peter notices the letter Ms. Potts is reading. It's from Maria Hill, a former agent of SHIELD. Peter commands Karen to help him better read it. Karen takes pictures, while she's at it.

The camera's flash initially blinds Peter, and causes him to swear. Lights are brighter for him, now that he has spider senses.

Up above, Ms. Potts hesitates, as if she heard Peter swore. She looks around. She shrugs, straightens her top, and keeps reading the letter. She causes earthquakes that make Peter want to vomit as she straightens her top.

Peter reads what he can of the letter before Ms. Potts drops it in a safe box and locks it. After that, Peter just takes a swing to the fountain pen on Ms. Potts' desk, perches atop it, and reads the rest of the letter via KAREN's photos.

Hill's been following the villainesses who allegedly killed Spider-Man. She's counted six, but she's not sure. Most of them are from Afroasia, but she thinks one or more might be from the Balkans. She's caught them counting a pair of necklaces, which they claim to have ripped off the victims' necks, which bear a strange pendant.

Both pendants match the description of the one Peter saw on both the victims before their murders. This is it. The villainesses are hunting for old men wearing these necklaces, and he and Hill already know that there's more than one. Peter's got to find out where the next victim is.

Fortunately, Hill said something about that in her letter too. She thinks she's found the next victim. Unfortunately, she and SHIELD aren't really talking now. But she knows some of Hawkeye's Avengers, and with luck, she'll have more than one big gun at the old man's house when the villainesses come shrieking.

Later in the day, Ms. Potts writes a reply letter to Hill's. She stuffs it in an envelope, and leaves it for Galina to deliver in secret.

Galina still wonders why Black Panther doesn't deliver secret mail; he's better with stealth, after all. Or even Dr. Strange; he can teleport. Ms. Potts only smiles, and reminds her that her husband wanted GALINA to be the next Iron Man; not T'Challa, Strange, or Walker. It's not that Mr. Stark believed in her; it's more like she needs redemption, and she's currently one of the few members of the East Coast Avengers who do.

Galina smiles, sighs, and promises to do her best. With that, she takes Ms. Potts's secret mail, and flies away with it.

Deep inside the letter Ms. Potts is sending to Hill, Peter's stowed away. With luck, Hill's hiding within range of where he'll need to be to protect target number three when the villainesses come shrieking.

The envelope smells nice. Peter's going to miss the scent of Ms. Potts's hands when it wears off the post...


	7. Chapter 7

This is Cedar Rapids. And in 1869, the rapids in the Cedar River couldn't be more active. And the cedar/juniper trees on the banks still stand as still as stones. They wouldn't in a storm...but soon, a storm will be the least of the local land's worries.

Nearby, a youth's band camp is in session. Horns make noise. Drums make noise. The occasional woodwind instrument disturbs. It's noise hell out here. And for that reason, some of the camp's chaperones have sought out a temporary escape from it all.

This is the cedar forest. Somewhere in it, there's a tent. Steam isn't spewing from its flaps...but it should be. Its two guests are behaving very queerly...and it goes without saying that if they tried to do this at home, they'd get disciplined with the force of a regiment of Yankee rifles, and about three batteries of Yankee cannons.

In the tent, the band director copulates with one of his students. He's a trumpet-player, of course. As much as he loves some of the drummers, most of them reject him when he tries to get horny with them. It's almost as if drummers aren't at all embarrassed about having crushes on women.

The band director doesn't understand them. But it doesn't matter; this chickenhawk has found a chicken worth sinking his talons into-and he SO will the whole time, if the whole Iowa militia has to peel them apart like a spoon and a fork that've been fused together at their tops-or better yet, their handles.

Band director and trumpeter moan. They pant. They sigh. They're both in paradise; any fellow pooftah would be able to tell.

Peter, of course, wouldn't know how he feels about this. Fortunately, he just has to protect them; not join them for a threesome.

"Oh Roger," the director says in a strangely Afroasian accent, "you're the best!"

The trumpeter doesn't notice...although he should. Afroasians don't usually settle this part of the Union...if at all.

Suddenly, their tent is ripped in two above them. The moonlight spotlights them like a beacon. They both roll over and stare up at who's dared interrupt their quality time. At first they're both worried it's the Iowa militia...

On the upside, it's not. On the downside, it's a scary merc with eerie green shades, and four metal tentacles.

Band director and student both scream...like girls. The merc only crosses her arms, and shakes her head.

"Typical," she hisses. "I always KNEW there was something about the way you made love to me I didn't like!"

"Please don't kill me," the band director stammers. He reaches into his clothes, and offers her the medallion-that would hang around his neck, if not for the demands of copulation. "I've spent years making a life for myself out here! Why would I go back?"

Nearby, the trumpeter gapes at his band director. "Mr. Foley...why are you speaking in an Arabian accent?"

"Well, junior," Dr. Octopussy enlightens the chickenhawk's chicken, "that's because your band director's real name isn't Mr. Foley. It's Mr. Fathi. He was once a great man, with a harem as big as a nation." She flaps her hair. "I might not have been his favorite wife, but I was sure as hell his smartest!"

"Now listen, you bitch," the trumpeter shouts. "This here is my band director. He is not Arabian, and he's not your husband. Now if you don't..."

"Roger," Mr. Fathi begs his chicken, "please don't! Just run!"

Too late. Dr. Octopussy takes Roger's head in the claspers at the ends of her two top prosthetic tentacles, and holds his face up to hers. He's terrified. The chicken's bitter end is only two dual squeezes away.

"Please," Mr. Fathi begs, "don't hurt him."

"Ah," Dr. Octopussy smiles, and caresses the boy's hair with her exposed fingers. She lifts her shades, and reveals her Albanian green eyes. In her clutches, the chicken trembles. It's as if he was an actual chicken-and a hen, at that.

"Ah, Mr. Fathi. As a chickenhawk, your tastes in chicken never cease to amuse me. Skin so light... Meat, no doubt," she pinches the boy's thighs with her other prosthetic tentacles, causing him to squawk, "even lighter. And yet...why do they have to even exist? Why can't all boys this cute be straight? Don't they know how lonely my kind are?"

"Please," Mr. Fathi whimpers, "let him go."

"Hmm," she takes off her green shades, "I don't know. It's been SO long since I've been just an average Afroasian wife, with REAL chickens to behead, all for the love of a hungry husband, who I once thought loved women more than the Afroasian flag, or its mosques, or its synagogues, or it's babies...not the girl ones, at least..."

This monologue is cut short, when Dr. Octopussy finds herself frozen in place by a tremendous amount of electricity going through her suit. In her clutches, Roger seems to get a lot more charge than she does.

"Stop," Dr. Octopussy shouts. "For the love of perfectly capable women everywhere, STOP!"

The surge stops. Dr. Octopussy opens her eyes, and looks the chicken in his. His eyes are fixed. His body is pale, and he draws no breath.

Dr. Octopussy sighs. "I had it under control! And need I not remind you that these tentacles are made of metal? If not for the power-dampeners I put in them a few weeks ago, this team would now be leaderless!"

A hot chick appears from behind the dead boy. She wears a bandanna around her head. She carries twin sais-which are now blood-stained. She generates a surge of electricity through them both, disintegrating the blood, and scattering it everywhere, as ashes.

"With you in charge," Elektra hisses, "reciting all of those monotonous monologues, when you should be just stepping up and running them through the spines with too much of their own electricity...I'm honestly shocked that we ever kill any victims at all."

Both villainesses look around. Mr. Fathi has abandoned his wallow. Far away, a man runs over a ridge, tripping to dress himself. He vanishes.

Elektra and Dr. Octopussy look at each other. "KILL DA BAND DEEWEKTAH," they both shout.

Panicked, Mr. Fathi runs through the forest. The juniper branches sting him as he does. It isn't far. He must get help...

He sees the rest of the camp. He runs towards it, with hope...

Elektra leaps, cuts him off, summons lightning with her sais, and threatens him with it. He screams like a girl, and stands petrified, in his boxers, waiting helplessly for his judgment by the remorselessness of a pair of bad girls gone worse.

"Please, I'll give you anything? You want my medallion? You got it! This life is all I have left; please don't take it from me, like you just did my chick-uh, ROGER!"

Dr. Octopussy arrives. She travels through the treetops via her four metal tentacles.

"Don't be a pussy, Sheikh-been-all-Faggoty! We don't want your money...even if it is forged property from the Afroasian treasury!" Elektra lights up her sais; Ock bares the grabbers at the ends of her metal tentacles. "We want your blood!"

Mr. Fathi screams like a girl. In camp, the campers just roll over in their beds and complain; there ought to be a noise control force at band camps.

Elektra's sais fly out of her hands. They sing like wind chimes as they fly away. Elektra stares after them, confused. She doesn't know how she lost them.

"Dijana," Ock mutters, "do you mind? This faggot won't kill himself."

"I...lost my sais. I don't know how."

"Well, GO GET THEM! Seriously; do I have to do all the thinking for this team?"

Before Ock can say more, she falls over, on her own tentacles. They've powered down.

"Out of juice," Ock mutters. "Give me a hand?"

"I'm...not used to doing it without my sais..."

"Elektra? We should've killed that son of a bitch days ago."

Elektra sighs, sends arcs of electricity through her hands, and kneels over Ock's octopus harness. Nearby, Mr. Fathi looks for a means of escape that doesn't require him to run lost through the wilderness indefinitely; Elektra and Ock are sealing off the only one.

"Sure hope this doesn't hurt you," Elektra whispers.

"PAIN IS POWER, DIJANA," Ock shouts. "WE BOTH NEED IT!"

Somewhere over there, one of the camp staff members wakes.

"Fine. Here goes..."

In the camp, a lamp is gaslit. Elektra freezes. Nearby, campers and staff folks are emerging from their tents. They see what's going on...all of it..."

"Dijana," Ock whispers, "seriously; hurry!"

Elektra nods, lights up her hands, and re-powers Ock's harness.

When she does, she sees that the harness isn't the only thing that powers up. There's webbing all over the harness. Its strands aren't very thick...but Elektra's impressed by how much was woven, and how its weaver could've woven all of it in such a short time.

Elektra shows a handful of it to Ock. She takes it in her hand, and analyzes it with the HUD in her green shades.

"_Spider-Man_," Ock hisses. "Bedir didn't kill him; she merely contracted him!"

"What do you mean 'contracted?' How is this stuff even Spider-Man's?!"

"Power down," a squad of sheriffs shout, while pointing repeating rifles at Elektra and Ock. "Put your hands in the air-all six of them!"

Ock sighs, inflates a balloon in her harness, and flies away. The sheriffs shoot at her as she leaves, but in vain.

Elektra stares at Mr. Fathi. Fathi shivers all over. She sends Fathi a taboo signal with her hand (one would have to be Afroasian to understand its offensive connotation), turns into electricity, and uses the water in the ground to slither away. They'll be back; just not when Fathi's at band camp; that'd make their next attempt to kill him too predictable.

The sheriff's advance, and accommodate for Mr. Fathi-who, for the time being, is Mr. Foley again. He isn't sure for how much longer.

"They killed a student," he tells the sheriffs, when they question him. "He's in the woods."

"Were you both in the woods," a sheriff studies the chicken pattern on his boxers, grinning, "or was it just him?"

Foley freezes. He isn't sure how to address that.

From somewhere in the woods, Maria Hill saw the whole thing. She gives the band camp the slip, before the sheriffs come out into the forest and search all of it.

Hill's camp is in the highlands, where the Cedar River begins. In it, there's a bulletin board, with pinned yarn connecting many photos. It's safely concealed between two hills. With luck, a heavy rain won't flood Hill's hideout before her use for it is ended.

She sits at a desk, and reaches for her typewriter. But she hesitates. She shakes her head, and gets a sheet of paper. She grabs a pen to start writing...

From up above, Ironheart arrives. She lands near Hill's camp. Hill sighs with relief, and puts the paper and pen away. She rushes out, and meets the West Coast Avengers trainee.

Her helmet vanishes. Hers is the head of Riri Williams.

"We've been strangely fortunate," she tells Williams, "but I don't know for how long. Spider-Man's alive."

Williams gapes...for a long time. "Where is he?"

Hill looks around. "He could be anywhere...but he's probably still around her. But I'd step lightly everywhere, if I were you. And I sure wouldn't squeeze anything I touched."

"What's wrong, Ms. Hill? You're scaring me."

"I have an idea about how to find him. But you're not going to like it."

Williams chuckles. "I'm Ironheart. I'm Hawkeye's best protege. What can't I handle?"


	8. Chapter 8

This is Toynbee, Deseret. It's a small town on the frontier. And for the time being, SHIELD is its sheriff. Its guest of honor stays in a classified place far south of town.

The wind blows a tumbleweed through the streets. Much is quiet and monotonous.

This is the local LDS chapel. Two SHIELD agents stand guard outside. Another pair stands guard on the roof. Someone inside is very safe.

Peter's aunt is inside, exchanging with the priest. He's in the confessional; although naturally, May isn't confessing.

The priest listens as she discloses how she feels about her husband's passing, as well as the passings of her nephew's parents, and the hardships of raising an orphan on her own. She admits that she knew something like this would happen to her one day, as long as her late husband's brother and sister-in-law were involved in a secretive life.

Inside, the priest sometimes yawns. Nonetheless, he is interested in what May discloses.

"Your nephew sounds exceptionally talkative, Ms. Reilly," he says. "I'm sure Queens won't take long to find him...if he's out there."

May comes out here a lot. She's no Mormon, but this beats spending time alone worrying about her late husband's nephew nonstop.

Near Toynbee sits its twin town, Humboldt. Ironically, SHIELD is the sheriff here, too.

Liz walks down a lonely path, towards Toynbee. Quake, a SHIELD agent, stays close to her.

Liz looks her up and down. "You're unarmed."

Quake chuckles. "I take it you haven't heard of me."

"You're a spy. Why should I have?"

Quake and Liz arrive. A few of the local men stop and look.

At the saloon, an outlaw prepares to get on his horse. He sees Quake and Liz, and stops. He grins; he's got more gold teeth than he's worth. He approaches them.

He hits on Liz. Liz isn't interested.

With a mighty seismic blast, Quake blasts the outlaw away. He, and a few other local crooks, scream like women, mount their horses, and ride out.

Liz gapes. "You... How can you do that?!"

Quake smiles, and slaps Liz on the back. "We're called Inhumans. You should learn about us sometime."

They stop at the chapel. Quake relieves the SHIELD agents at the door. Liz goes in. All around, the locals are staring at Quake-men AND women, single and married, pre-pubescent and post-pubescent...

Inside, Liz sits in a pew, and waits for the confessional. That's when she sees who's already there.

"Ms. Reilly?!"

May sees her. She begs the priest's pardon, and attends to Liz. May sits, and they talk. They're both surprised to meet each other out here, far from Queens and Oregon City.

They find out that they're both in witness protection. They find out that they both witnessed a pair of villainessses kill an old man. They both admit that the old men they saw get killed reminded them of foreigners. May's amused; she could've sworn hers was an actual Italian immigrant.

And then May tells Liz the less fortunate circumstances of the former's custody: Spider-Man's dead, and Peter's missing. Liz is scared. She hugs May, and tells her she hopes Peter's all right. May shakes her head, and admits she doesn't know what to think.

Then, a shadow passes over her face. She isn't sure how...but she has a hunch that if Spider-Man is really dead, her late husband's nephew is too.

Liz chuckles. "I love Peter more than any girl I've known. But your nephew's clumsy, Ms. Reilly. There's no way in hell your nephew's Spider-Man."

Outside, Quake snickers. Inside, May and Liz look around, as if they heard her.

"Agent Johnson," Liz shouts, "is there something out there we should know about?"

"Nothing scary," Quake replies, trying not to laugh. "Please, go back to your girl talk!"

May confesses that Peter still loves Liz. She tells Liz that when she grows up, she might consider moving back to New York, for his sake.

Liz grins. As much as she'd love to, her father's prison is also in New York. Reuniting with Peter that way would require her to forgive her father. And she's not ready to do that yet.

Liz does tell May, though, that she thinks she's met a new boy in Oregon City. May beams, and leans in to listen.


	9. Chapter 9

This is an abandoned farm in the Dakota Territory. Some squatters have settled in it, while it's between owners.

Kershen the Huntress takes up a bow and arrow, and does some target practice. She puts her rage and impatience into it.

"Two witnesses still alive," she grumbles between arrows. "Four ex-husbands still at-large. Spider-Man's alive, knowing, and possibly stalking us. These Sacrilegious Six are not off to a very good start, are we?"

Trachtenberg, the She-Vulture, is flying around the farm. She lands nearby, and takes her goggles off. "What was once six has become seven. With luck, someone has long-squashed Spider-Man, like the bug he impersonates. No thanks to our special effects expert!"

A giant cobra rises from the sand, raises its hood, and bares its fangs. With sinister eyes, it looks down at her two teammates.

They just stare at her. Trachtenberg covers her mouth with her glove and coughs.

Bedir snores, and reimagines herself back into herself. "My illusions are not a hard science, you know. I told you all that before we all began. Besides, that kerosene tank would've caused a lot of damage; it's already bad enough that Reilly widow saw us."

"Yes. It is."

Marya advances towards them, flipping a crystal-shaped baton in her hand. Around her, grains of soil trickle through the grass, and orbit around her like gnats.

"At this rate," she says, "we could fail more than succeed. We might as well turn ourselves over to SHIELD now."

"And for what?" A patch of grass lights up, and Dijana erects herself from it. She's forged new sais for herself. She spins them a few times in her hands, and belts them.

"The Avengers would surely make sport of raping us! Worst case scenario, they'll expel us back to Afroasia...and this quest will have been for naught!"

They argue. They can't tell what each other's saying.

"ENOUGH!"

All fall silent. From aloft, Oseku parachutes in. Near the ground, she severs the parachute ropes, and falls. She raises her octopus prosthetics, and their claspers appear to peer around, like snakes.

"You pessimistic fools," she growls. "Spider-Man is our priority now! He's proven that his small size only makes him superior to his targets. If we are to evade his efforts to stop us," the green lights in her shades narrow, "we must even the playing field."

"How are we going to re-size him back to normal," Marya asks, "when we don't know where he is, or can't see him?"

"It's not him we will resize. It's ourselves!"

"What," Dijana exclaims.

"You're kidding," Kershen begs.

"We still have four ex-husbands and two witnesses to kill," Trachtenberg reminds their brainy leader. "Don't you think we'll all stand a better chance at pulling those off if we're still our present sizes?"

"Bedir," Oseku calls out, "I believe you can make us small, as you accidentally did Spider-Man."

Bedir shrugs. "I can't guarantee those results. I wasn't trying to shrink Spider-Man. I'd thought the blast had already killed him before I shrunk that explosion."

"You WILL replicate your success with Spider-Man," Oseku hisses. "If you don't, everything we work hard for will likely be in vain if Spider-Man is ever there to stop us again!"

"What I don't get," Marya adds, "is what Spidey's doing so far away from the Big Apple. He's practically its homeboy!"

"It doesn't matter, Oseku insists. "Crushing Spider-Man like a bug is a bad plan, as long as we don't know where he is. But if we're as small as him, we'll see him. Once we find him, we can resize ourselves, and guarantee our own success in this quest!"

A gold coin falls out of Kershen's threads. No one notices.

"I order you again, Bedir," Oseko hisses, "MAKE US SMALL."

Bedir swallows, nods, places her palms together, and closes her eyes. She breathes, and waits.

All around, the other Sacrilegious Six get dizzy. They hallucinate, lose all sense of focus, and dream they hear beautiful music; Loreena McKennitt's "Marco Polo," to be more specific.

They see hookah smoke. They see sand dunes. They see floating Afroasian rugs. They see towers topped with onion domes. They see cobras gliding in circles. They see clouds in Jannah moving...

The illusion takes over five minutes to pass. When it does, the Sacrilegious Six stand in a circle, facing away from one another.

Bedir has reimagined their clothing. They all now each wear a metal bra, and chain-mail panties. The bare essentials of their costumes are still present; just more refined, and tailored to match their new clothing.

"We look like whores," Dijana gapes.

As best as she can, Marya attempts to stare at her own barely chain-mail-covered ass. She tries to grin, while her head is turned, as she likes what she feels...if not what she sees...

They each stand on a metal hill. They look around. Around and beneath them, a metal plain expands for miles. They look up.

Trachtenberg spreads her cybernetic vulture wings, and takes to the sky. She flies around. She lands. She takes her goggles off.

"This is no plain," she reports. "This was Kershen's coin!"

Dijana faints.

"EASY," Bedir loudly whispers. "You could've electrocuted us!"

"I'm out of charge," Dijana mutters sleepily.

Kershen feels around for the coins in her pocket. Alas, her pockets have been replaced by chain-mail sacks, that hang from her new panties. "You owe me six pieces of eight," she yells at Bedir.

"No I don't," Bedir says, smiling and toting a magnificent silver-steel shield. "We're all wearing them!"

"Now that we are small," Oseku hisses, "Spider-Man has fewer places to hide! We will find and kill him! And once we do, no one will stand in our way! Not the Avengers! Not SHIELD! No sheriff's pistol on the frontier will ever hinder the Sacrilegious Six!"

Dr. Octopussy seems confident. As for her five loyal followers...some are starting to lose faith.

"How do we look for them? I doubt even Trachtenberg could cover much ground in this state." Marya nods at Trachtenberg. "No offense."

"None taken," Trachtenberg admits. "But seriously; how do six fleas cover the whole damn American frontier?"

"Easy." Oseku smiles, and blows a whistle, which now hangs from her neck. "As fleas, we are now the proud co-owners of..."

Bedir mimics a drum roll, as the Sacrilegious Six are approached by something tall and mighty. Some of them gasp as its shape becomes apparent. High over them, a coyote appears to stand. Except...it's made of metal...and moves like a robot...

"Say marhaba," Oseku beholds, "to our team's set of wheels...legs. Behold...the Sacrilege-Mobile!"

Robotically, the giant metal coyote opens its mouth. "Welcome," the AI inside it says, "Oseku, Marya, Bedir, Kershen, Trachtenberg, and Dijana of the Sacrilegious Six!"

Oseku clenches one of her metal tentacles, and raises it high. "Mount up!"

Dijana merges with one of the Sacrilege-Mobile's front legs, and travels up it to her mount. Trachtenberg, of course, flies up to hers.

Against each of its four legs, a ladder leads up to the other four mounts. Bedir imagines herself into a faun, and climbs up hers, as sure-footed as an ibex would climb a cliff.

Dr. Octopussy mounts the coyote's head. Once her team is mounted, she sounds the charge. The Sacrilege-Mobile howls, and runs. Once it starts, the other Sacrilegious Six members sure are glad they remembered to buckle in.

They've got a lot of ground to cover, if they want to kill Spider-Man. Fortunately, the Sacrilege-Mobile is just as good as tracking as it is covering large spaces in small times.

All six ladies know that their husbands wouldn't want to marry them if they could see them now. Lucky for them, though, two of them are already dead. It's just a matter of killing the other four. Tasks that'll have to wait, they're all afraid, as long as Spider-Man has proven himself capable enough to stop them from killing one of their exes.

They've no idea that their enemy is just as lost as they are. And in the middle of the American Wild West, he's soon about to become even more so.


	10. Chapter 10

This is Ms. Potts's chambers. The cloth is fluffy, and the wood is shiny. She's got more space than she needs. And Peter's sure that her father thought so too when she was more Morgan's age.

As the husband is bent, so grows the widow. And as both one and a corporate CEO, Peter knows, better than any man or lesbian he can think of, that she has.

Around her neck, she still wears a necklace made of shrapnel. This shrapnel was once lodged hopelessly in Tony Stark's chest; so much so that not even the talented Dr. Yinsen from Gulmira could dissect it all.

Peter has crawled all over certain pieces of this shrapnel by now. And he's gotten more than a decent view of everything that's just beneath it. And by accident, he's cut himself on the sharper parts of this shrapnel. Whoever attacked Mr. Stark with this all that time ago sure knew what they were doing...

Her bathroom is kept clean. If Peter looks at any spot of it at the wrong time, it hurts his eyes.

Peter watches Ms. Potts bathe. She's like a water buffalo...if water buffalo cows were white with blonde hair. The soap she uses fluffs her bathwater up like a great fragile pillow. Peter hardens each time her nude parts break the surface.

She showers. Through Stark's steam-proof glass, Peter can see all of her as it gets wet and soapy. He beholds her ass, her legs, and her bare back. When she turns the other way to let it run over her back and hair, he beholds her chest, her navel, and her feet...

Mr. Stark had no idea how lucky he was. No doubt, his spirit still doesn't...

Her lace panties sit on the bed, like dual hoops. She inadvertently rocks Peter softly, as she pulls them onto her lower end, oblivious to a mite-sized boy dreaming away in its threads.

Ms. Potts creates beautiful quakes in her sleep; both by breathing, and by rolling around on the double bed...the one she once shared with Mr. Stark.

Her bare back is a soft great plain. She doesn't feel Peter as the latter explores it multiple times in the dark, and under her bed's covers.

Her ass cheeks are even softer mountains. Peter mountaineers them many times as she sleeps.

Her thighs are harder...but otherwise very nourishing to a boy in rut. Peter doesn't climb them-he's already on top-but he does spend countless hours peering down into the great abyss of her elegant thigh gap as its owner slumbers.

On the floor, Ms. Potts does her exercises. She lifts her legs. She curls her belly. She spreads her legs. She raises her arms. She moves her head around on her shoulders.

Peter watches all of this. He wonders why Ms. Potts doesn't put on the Rescue suit more often...

Not that Peter's complaining. He'd rather see Ms. Potts's cleavage, and quite frankly, the Rescue suit doesn't reveal enough.

The Ironheart suit doesn't reveal much of Riri Williams either, come to think of it... And neither does the Iron Man suit of Nemirovsky...

She paints her nails. Peter beholds, as she maintains perfect balance while doing so. She breathes steadily, and keeps a calm composure. It takes her eons to paint all ten toes and all ten fingers.

One of her nails would be like a ball field to Peter, if he perched on one. And he doesn't mind if he does...as soon as they're dry.

She paints her lips. They're big; they must've suffocated Mr. Stark once upon a marriage.

She grabs her purse on the way out the door. To Peter, it's like a merchant ship hanging from a beautiful CEO's shoulder. Its leather was imported from some of the toughest creatures in the bare-skinned world. From the Persian deserts, Peter's sure, where her husband once fought jihad, while the greater U.S. Army protected Texas from Mexico's most desperate legions in the late 1840s...

Polk was president at the time. Fuck, did Mr. Stark and Polk have some great times at the White House, while Ms. Potts was left alone at home for days on end...

At least she wasn't pregnant with Morgan at the time. Not that Peter isn't glad she was born, understand...

Damn, Morgan's mom has got it going on. She's all Peter wants, and he's waited for SO long...

Ms. Potts wears pumps en route to her job. On the pavement, they clop like a trotting Clydesdale. Or at least, that's what they sound like to passers-by. To Peter, perched on the straps of her purse, they sound more like Ragnarok's thunder.

Ms. Potts is back in her office. So is Peter. She can see the whole building from where she works. Every now and then, she can see Nemirovsky as she test-flies the latest perfection in Iron Man exosuits...

She has to work on her hero name, of course. She can't be Iron Man, after all, if she's not a man.

Ms. Potts hangs her coat, revealing her shirt and tie beneath. She loosens her tie, and unbuttons several of the top buttons. She sighs, and sits. Beneath the chair, she slips her feet out of her pumps.

Peter rides on the pen as Ms. Potts writes with it. It's a dizzying ride; but as Spider-Man, Peter's ridden on steel beams as cranes moved them over New York's highest spots. Her hand is like a benevolent five-limbed sweet-smelling giantess, inadvertently trying to shake him off the pen. But Peter's Spider-Man; the Rhino couldn't hinder him, and neither will the giantess Ms. Potts.

Ms. Potts is the CEO of a major company. And Peter is just a cheap nerd from the hood...

Ms. Potts types on the typewriter. Peter rides her knuckles as her giant fingers strike the keys. Her hands smell great. And he's got a great view of her rack from where he perches...

He's perched on her left ring knuckle. He's literally perched right on the pale white circle at the base of her finger...where Mr. Stark's wedding ring once rested. Ms. Potts is SO sexually available; Peter just knows it... And the fact that Potts went back to using her maiden name after her husband's death can only ever over-imply the probability...

Ms. Potts cuts open envelopes with a knife. Peter rides on her thumb nail as she does. He's right; her nail is as big as a ball field. And Peter is SO playing left field in this game...

Ms. Potts looks cute when she's opening envelopes. Mr. Stark never told him... But then, Mr. Stark wasn't likely ever there for half of it. He made sure of that, of course, when he gave the reins of his company to his better half on a silver platter.

A lot of women and pooftahs thought he was crazy at the time. And yet, one would've expected Ms. Potts to get more praise for encouraging women's suffrage...

Peter's hard. And Ms. Potts's clothes aren't even very revealing...

Back from work, Ms. Potts's pumps make more noise going back home than they did going to work. Peter perches on the toe of the left one. It's a dizzying ride; dangerous, sometimes. But this ride is what makes Peter the hardest; and he'll maintain the position until Ms. Potts is home.

She gets home. She rides an express elevator up to her chambers. Once up there, she sheds her shoes on the landing. Peter swings to a place where he can watch Ms. Potts strip.

She's shed her coat. Peter gawks as she sheds her work clothes, revealing her loose and revealing lingerie beneath.

She asks FRIDAY how her daughter's doing, who gives her a progress report, and a 20. Ms. Potts sighs restfully, loosens her bra, and peels it off of her.

FRIDAY opens the windows, and Ms. Potts takes a nap...while topless. She lies very still...

Peter swings and crawls over to her feet, and perches on the nail of her big toe. To him, it's as big as a ball field. He's hard for her. KAREN loosens his suit for him, so his body can vent.

Way over there, Ms. Potts's chest rises and falls as she snoozes. The atmosphere coming through the windows puts her at ease.

She's topless. Peter swings and crawls along her bare leg. And it is a VERY elegant leg. To him, it's more like a raised land-bridge; the isthmus that the Stone Age humans WISH they had to cross into North America, instead of Beringia...

Peter stops to stare down into her navel. To him, it's like a crater...

Her boobs are bare mountains, ready to climb. For Peter, it'll be a breeze. He gets to work climbing her left boob-the one that's closest to her heart. He's like a mite; she doesn't feel him.

He's got a spectacular view of her quarters. And for some weird reason, he'd rather have THIS view, than one from the ceiling...

In moments like these, Peter would LOVE to cheat on Morgan with her mom. Yes indeed, as a sexually available widow, and the lonely CEO of a major company, Ms. Potts is quite the MILF...

Peter wakes. He's still in the forest, where he humiliated Elektra and Dr. Octopussy in front of one of their husbands and a bunch of band camp sheriffs. He's hiding in a tree hole. He's lucky a woodpecker hasn't come along and eat him by now.

He remembers his purpose. He must find the other ex-husbands, so he can protect them. And he's got no idea how to start looking. And he's got no way of asking Ms. Hill if she knows anything else.

But for now, his aunt probably takes priority. If he can find where she's being protected, he can still be the neighborhood's friendly Spider-Man...seeing as a neighborhood is probably as big as the town where she's being hidden in ever gets.

Far away, the lobos and coyotes howl. Spider-Man shoots a web, and moves on, relying on KAREN to guide him to a likely place where his aunt is being quartered by SHIELD.


	11. Chapter 11

In a cleared patch of dry forest, an eternal campfire burns. According to local Mormon legend, it is the power source, consecrated by the Godhead, that provides all of Deseret with all the power it will ever need: past, present, future, alpha, and omega.

The fire is not what it seems. For one thing, Tony Stark invented...PART of it...

Around the fire, signs read "KEEP OUT." Most of these signs are appended with anti-trespassing passages from the Book of Mormon, of course. But if one were to ever trespass these lines, they'd be taken to a whole new reality. Its first name is "steam," and its last name is "punk."

Once near the fire, the world changes, and gets bigger...and redder, for a time. Once the red clears, however, there's a whole new sight to behold.

It's a steam factory. Its many chimneys expel the excess team, from its massive rooftop.

That isn't steam coming from its chimneys. It is...but it isn't. All around the reality's fluid boundaries, portals open, and transport the steam clouds away. Throughout Deseret, any committed Mormon who genuinely believes in the cause will receive these clouds, and their families will have the energy they need to get through their days.

The front entrance of the factory bears the name "STARK INDUSTRIES." Far from the front door, there is also a sign that reads the same label.

Outside, Spider-Man swings towards the campfire, thinking that it's attended to. He perches on a pine limb, and stares at it, confused.

He looks around. There don't seem to be any people around. He would call for one...except they wouldn't hear him. He glides to the ground, and ventures towards it...

He's swept away, and dizzied, by the illusion that lies beyond the "KEEP OUT" signs. He's crept out at this point, and panics.

The illusion settles, and he sees the steam factory. He falls over, and vomits.

He stands, and takes off his mask. He looks at the sign nearby. He looks down, and up. He's his normal size.

But now he's confused. He always knew that Mr. Stark was ahead of his time...but this seems advanced even for him...

Peter follows the path to the front door. The factory's walls are tall; he's still not used to being back to his normal size.

Across the front lot, grains of sand trickle. On the factory roof, a creepy-looking buzzard appears to perch. Peter's being watched...and not just by two pairs of eyes, either.

Peter expects the front door to be locked. Surprisingly, the front door vanishes the instant he sets foot on the landing. Confused, he walks in. Behind him, and invisible person deviously joins him.

Peter's surprised to find only one room inside the huge factory. It's filled with red smoke, steam, and shadows. He holds his breath...only to find out he can breathe. Never in his life has he...

A red light glows, in the center of it all. Peter fans away the billows, and creeps towards it.

The last billow recedes. And Peter sees what's at the factory's center. It's an Infinity Stone. More specifically, it's the Reality Stone.

"Congrats, Spider-Man. You've located the heart of our scheme!"

Slowly, Peter turns around. He's surrounded by six foreign girls. They're all in armored bras and chain-mail panties. One has cybernetic wings. One has a crossbow, and hunting knives in scabbards on her belt. One has dual sais hanging from hers.

One has prosthetic tentacles radiating from her back. She advances towards him.

"Who are you," Peter muses.

"Once, we were wives," Dr. Octopussy begins. "Our husbands were men of vision. For their visions, they were exiled by our land's masters...and their great harems-jewels that once turned every head in Afroasia-were disbanded. Now we are all but abandoned divorcees...all alone, to ensure that our husbands' legacies WILL be realized...one way or another, even if we have to forge them on another continent."

"What are you talking about?" Peter points at the invisible girl, lurking in the shadows. "Didn't you attack my uncle's widow? And you," he points at the girl with the wings. "You killed the host at the pizzeria! Why..." Peter blinks. "Was he one of your husbands?"

"Ah, very good, Spider-Man," Dr. Octopussy commends him. "You aren't such a teenage mind after all."

"You all seem kind of young to be such an old man's wife."

She-Vulture scoffs. "Poor kid. He doesn't know a damn thing about our world."

"I see you're confused." Dr. Octopussy waves her arm around the place. "Allow me to make minimal use of the Reality Stone. It is an Infinity Stone; if I use too much of it, I might kill myself."

All around, the billows roll. Nearby, an illusion materializes. It's of a city in Afroasia. As Dr. Octopussy narrates the story, the illusion shows it to Peter.

"Our six husbands were imams and rabbis. They inspired the Caliph. They didn't always marry for love...but they always married for glamour. We were the shiniest in the Great Jewelry Box. All who beheld us loved us. We would've shamed the harems of King Solomon of Israel.

"Our husbands wanted to transform Afroasia. They wanted all and everyone in Afroasia to be like us. They couldn't stand evil, as Afroasians knew it. They dreamt of a world where all evil was expelled outside the countries borders, while good brewed, bred, and erected works of goodness for as long as there were Afroasians to uphold the magnificent banner with glamour and reverence.

"But for some reason, the Caliph liked Afroasia the way it was. He branded them heretics, and appropriated their property...and their harems. Not...that we didn't enjoy the mighty Caliph's company. He was rich in a way that, for a time, actually made me and my peeps want to stay in his seraglio more than we ever did in our...semi-straight husbands."

All around Dr. Octopussy, the other girls giggle, and/or subtly snicker. Sandgirl only sighs. Mystria hides her face...as she always did in public under the Caliph's rule.

"There were officials in the capital who wanted our husbands executed for treason. But the Caliph valued them too much. So he trusted his secret servants to exile them...and he didn't tell anyone where or how. There was widespread protest across the land...but then it died, as soon as everyone came to realize that the Caliph's mind couldn't be petitioned...as can't Allah's."

Huntress and She-Vulture clear their throats.

"Or Yahweh's," Dr. Octopussy adds, to accommodate for the two Hebrews in her team's ranks. Not that it's relevant, but they both suck at brewing coffee...

"We got to stay with the Caliph for a while," Dr. Octopussy continued. "We had less space, but at least we were in the company of a man who couldn't fail us if he tried. But we were bad girls. We pushed him to order Afroasia's women to stop wearing veils, start wearing short skirts, and make the sale of puppies, pork, and booze legal. And for that, he imprisoned all of us. And if not for the beautiful minds of myself and the SheVulture, we all would've met our terminal ends by the following sunrise.

"And now, we are outlaw women...doomed to roam the land and scrounge a living off of the infidel and gentile proletariat. Our old lives are always within reach...but never as real as they could've been...had our Afroasian motherland been more receptive to our great ex-husbands' vision."

With that, the illusion rolls away. And the inside of the factory is, once again, plunged into red-stained dimly-lit darkness.

"We are here," Dr. Octopussy continues, "to finish what our ex-husbands started. We didn't always like them, or love them...but hot damn if she sure didn't love their vision. One way or another, we WILL materialize it. And Afroasia is not an option.

"This steam plant, on the other hand, has the perfect seed. And when the seed interacts with our ex-husbands' vision, Deseret will soon have everything Afroasia once blindly rejected for itself." She shrugs. "Sure, we'll have to force a lot of Mormons to convert to Islam and Judaism...as well as force a lot of white people to become Afroasians...but hey; at least we're not plotting to KILL them, right?"

"But you're doing this without the Mormons' consent," Peter reminds them. "They might be American fugitives, but at least they like themselves the way they are."

"Can you be sure of that? Do you really think the Mormons would ever be bold enough to give up polygamy, if it meant living in peace with the monogamous American majority?"

"I don't know. But what you're doing is tantamount to rape!"

Dr. Octopussy scoffs, and straightens her chrome bra. "Do we look like male supremacists to you?"

All around, the other girls snicker.

"But fortunately for your concern, Spider-Man, we don't yet have everything we need to get started. THAT'S what our ex-husbands' blood is for."

Peter gives them a confused look.

"Our ex-husbands are the inventors of their vision. Therefore, without their blood, we risk abusing the vision for ourselves."

Peter scoffs. "You're already abusing it; by forcing the Mormons to take it against their wills."

"Well...it's not like your precious Uncle Sam would cry if all the Mormons in Deseret died from being test subjects in an experiment, right? Last I checked, the Republicans in Washington want Deseret for America's own...'Manifest Destiny,' I do believe they call American imperialism these days?"

"The Mormons might be weird, but they're also humans," Peter reminds them. "Take it from someone who knows."

"Oh Spidey, as cute as you are, and as fun as you are to flirt with, me and my sisters in crime have got a vision to materialize. And if you're not going to become our seventh sister, then you are officially an obstacle we must deal with."

With that, She-Vulture puts on her goggles, and spreads her wings. All around, sand trickles across the floor...towards Peter. Huntress loads a bolt into her crossbow. Elektra draws her two sais, and electrifies them.

"Now, Spider-Boy," Dr. Octopussy spreads her prosthetic tentacles, "how may we terminally relieve you?"

Spider-Man looks around. She shoots a webbed net over Elektra, pinning her. She loses her sais. He shoots webbed nets at them too, pinning them to the wall, far from their owner.

She-Vulture dives. Spider-Man dodges Dr. Octopussy's tentacles, as she tries to impale him with them. Spider-Man shoots a web onto her shades, blinding her. He glides over her, and hits her in the head, knocking her down.

With the crossbow, Huntress shoots at him, as he glides in midair. While airborne, Spider-Man uses his reflexes to dodge the bolts.

In midair, She-Vulture swoops, grabs Spider-Man, and takes him outside. She smashes a window while doing so.

She-Vulture, with Spider-Man bound tightly in her clutches, rides a thermal in rising circles, beneath a red-stained-bottomed cloud aloft. They ascend higher, and higher, and higher...

Spider-Man shakes loose, again, and starts falling. He engages the wingsuit in his suit, and glides towards the roof...

He's snatched in midair-by a giantess's hand. Mystria is now a fifty-foot amazon, and she's got him pinched between her fingers, like a bug. Between her thumb and index finger, she crushes him. It hurts...but as this is an illusion, Spider-Man both can and can't feel the pain.

She throws him to the ground, and stomps on him. She wiggles the heel of her foot from side to side, trying to smear Spider-Man all over the pavement. Spider-Man is having such a hard time breathing, he's surprised he hasn't woken up. But then he remembers he's not asleep...

At last, Mystria raises her foot, and kicks Spider-Man across the pavement. He's greeted by a huge sand-made mace, which hammers him from above.

Sandgirl, too, has become a giantess. She's not much smaller than Mystria...but at least she looks hotter than She-Thing...

Mystria kicks Sandgirl away, and tries to go after Spider-Man on her own. A grappling match results; Sandgirl and Mystria both fall over-creating a brief tremor while doing so-and grapple one another like dual amazons-one sandy, and one human-like...

Peter runs. Behind him, the Sacrilegious Six chase him. He can't outrun them. He trips, rolls over, and gapes up at them.

The Six stop. Dr. Octopussy crawls to the front of the ranks, and advances on a subtly-backing and prone Spider-Man...

"You're at our mercy now, Spider-Man," she hisses. "Prepare to meet your end, at the feminine-yet-mighty hands of the Sacrilegious Six!"

Spider-Man remembers the Reality Stone. Tapping into its power, he shrinks to the size of a mite.

The Six gape, confused. Angry, Elektra shoots Mystria with an electric blast.

"Don't blame me," Mystria demands. "I didn't shrink him this time! He must've exploited the Reality Stone!"

"Well exploit it back," She-Vulture hisses. "Make him big enough for us to kill without missing!"

Mystria sighs, and tries to re-enlarge Spider-Man. Too late; he's already outside the campfire, and retreating.

"He's gone," Mystria reports. "The Reality Stone is suppressing my powers."

"Damn you," Dr. Octopussy growls, "Spider-Man!" All around her, the Sacrilegious Six scream in rage.


	12. Chapter 12

Once again, Peter is the size of a mite. At least he now knows who's in danger.

And yet...it'd be easier for him if he knew the other ex-husbands' names and locations. And, he's back to protecting his late uncle's widow until he figures out where to go from here. One thing's for certain: at some point, the Sacrilegious Six will come try to kill Ms. Reilly. And when they do, Spider-Man will be there...to whatever end.

Through the pine canopy of the forest, Peter sees a billow of smoke. KAREN can't identify it from where Peter is, so he swings towards it.

It's a cabin. There are SHIELD agents outside it. And there's a boat under a cloth. Spider-Man isn't sure he'd recommend that.

Simmons/Deathlok is on duty outside the back door. Her prosthetic arm is a rotary cannon.

Her prosthetic eye is a microscope. With it, she spies on grains of pollen as they land on flowers' pistils and pollinate them. She switches the eye to X-ray mode, and watches the pollen fertilize the eggs while they're still inside the flowers. She moves over to the plants' leaves, and watches the chloroplasts absorb minerals, water, sun, and carbon dioxide, and transmutate them into glucose: the life potion of all plants.

Peter switches into stealth mode, and swings past Simmons, best he can. He talks a lot, and interacts with KAREN.

Simmons perks her ears. KAREN notices, and deploys the Iron Spider effects just in time.

Simmons looks Peter's way. She sees a strange-looking mite. It seems like an oddball, in a habitat where most mites avoid at this time of day. She magnifies her eye, to get a better look.

Part of the mite is tucked behind a leaf. She can't quite tell what it is...

Peter hides next to the leaf, and tries to remain calm. He doesn't hear a word out of KAREN.

Finally, Simmons's eye moves away from the leaf. It falls on a fly, that's crawling around on the leaf nearby. Simmons smiles, and returns to her patrol. Seems like these days, mites will do just about anything for food.

After a huge sigh of relief-which he's lucky for Simmons not to overhear, Peter reenters stealth mode. He swings through the bedroom window, and tries to keep speech between himself and KAREN-or to himself, even-to a minimum until he's inside.

He recognizes some of Ms. Reilly's possessions. He's found her; now he can protect her.

SHIELD looks like they've got it covered. But then, they always do...until a supervillain, alien, or god attacks something they're guarding, and the next thing they know, the Avengers have assembled...

It doesn't look like she's home. At least they finally got her to unpack...

Peter swings around the room, like a web-spinning mite. Ms. Reilly's got a nice room. Part of Peter wishes it were his. But then, he'd have a target painted on his back too...

Ah, what a nice back Ms. Reilly must have... Peter's uncle sure chose right in love, back when he was alive.

A bra hangs from the collapsible mirror. Peter swings to it, rolls down into one of the cups, and takes off his suit. He's only in his briefs now. Ms. Reilly's bra is comfy.

Peter's hard now. He knows he shouldn't sleep while on guard duty, but... Ms. Reilly's got some MAGNIFICENT breasts. It's almost hard to believe that in the future, they relieve the stress of Mel Gibson, Adam Sandler, and Matt McConaughey, to name a few...

He wakes. Two metal staffs are pinching his midriff. Like a crane, they lift him out of bed. Funny; Parker's never been moved by a crane while drowsy.

He falls. He lands in something soft. If he wasn't awake before, he is now. His surroundings smell good.

He looks up into a pair of big brown eyes. Her lashes are so long, he could do pull-ups from them.

Her lips are huge. He could get stuck on one of them.

It's Ms. Reilly. She's caught her late husband's nephew in her bra.

She can tell that the Frontier has been rough to Peter. She's flattered that he would come all the way out to Toynbee to protect her.

She doesn't seem overwhelmed to find out that Peter's Spider-Man. But then, Peter remembers he's not wearing his suit.

Peter tries to climb out of her hand. He's got a post to get back to, and...

He screams like a girl, when he realizes it's such a long fall from where Ms. Reilly's holding her hand to the floor of her bedroom. And Peter's not wearing his suit.

A pair of huge fingers pinch Peter's ass, and drag him back into the palm of Ms. Reilly's hand. Peter's almost seduced by the gentleness of her squeeze; he's the size of a mite.

"Now's not the time to go back to work, Peter. I was SO worried about you when you weren't at home when I got there after we had pizza."

She buries him under her finger, nearly suffocating him. Peter wonders why it doesn't hurt as much as he expects...

A widow can get lonely after a while, she tells Peter. And having to raise a pubescent male all alone has a way of...enhancing the sexuality.

Peter's eyes bug. He can't believe Ms. Reilly is driving at what he thinks she is. Not that he's criticizing; he's glad she is. But...is she crazy?

She dumps Peter on her fingernail. It's painted pink, and as big as a ball field. This time, its owner is looking right at him. She's hardly a major corporate CEO...but she's not hard on the eyes, either.

Ms. Reilly flaps her brown hair, and adjusts her sleeveless top. Peter creeps to the edge of her nail, to see if he can see her downblouse...

Somehow, Ms. Reilly has always dreamed of this. And what better place to be a cougar, than in the seclusion of witness protection in the Frontier?

With her other hand, Ms. Reilly pours a shot of vermouth. With her tweezers, she nearly drowns Peter in the pelagic depths of the wine. A minor, and hence a pathological teetotaler, Peter vomits it the first time Ms. Reilly tempts him. Ms. Reilly laughs.

"It's an acquired taste, Peter. I don't doubt many cougar baits don't get used to it prior to their first time."

"First time? What do you...?" Before Peter can finish, Ms. Reilly submerges him in the wine again. It may be just his imagination, but it seems she keeps him down there longer and longer each time.

Funny; the wine doesn't start to taste like anything. And yet, Peter's dick is hardening...

She sits, giggles, and sets him on her bare upper leg. She leans back, nudges Peter with her giant finger every now and then, and asks if he knows who wants her dead.

Peter divulges. He's after six supervillainesses who call themselves the Sacrilegious Six. They want to turn Deseret into a utopian Afroasia. And that wouldn't be so bad, except for a couple of things.

Peter's distracted by Ms. Reilly's boobs. She giggles, and asks him to continue.

The first, Peter continues, is that the Mormons love their religion, and won't take too kindly to becoming forced to worship Allah and/or Yahweh. The second is that the Sacrilegious Six plan to transmutate every Mormon in Deseret into a Semite.

Ms. Reilly reminds Peter that from what anyone's heard, the Mormons don't do so well with non-Mormon white people. Maybe they NEED to be transmutated?

Peter just can't relate. He knows he might be weird, but he likes himself the way he is. He admits that there were times, before the radioactive spider bite, where he thought he would've loved to get transmutated into Justin Bieber, or a Jonas brother, or someone of a similar sort. But even without Spider-Man, he's still caught the eye of beautiful women (Ms. Reilly smiles down upon him, and adjusts her top, when he says this), and he's also pretty sure that no one would get used to him if he ever forced himself to look like someone else.

Ms. Reilly asks how this 'Sacrilegious Six' plans to accomplish all of this. Deseret is a big place, and from what she's heard, the pioneers are having an impossible time colonizing it at it is.

Peter tells her about the steam factory Mr. Stark has operating in Deseret. To the Mormons, it looks like an eternally-burning campfire. But if one ventures past the "KEEP OUT" signs, they find themselves in a pocket universe, where the factory is. And the only thing inside the factory is the Reality Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones.

Ms. Reilly laughs. And she thought SHIELD was bad at abusing the Infinity Stones, she says.

She presses her finger really hard, every now and then, against the fat of her upper leg. To Peter, this sends shockwaves that keep making him fall over.

Ms. Reilly asks Peter that if the Sacrilegious Six plan to use the Reality Stone to make their dream come true, can't they just modify all the negative minutiae to where this "New Afroasia" doesn't require anyone living in it to be miserable.

Peter reminds Ms. Reilly that the Reality Stone is an Infinity Stone. He knows that there are six of them...but they're women, and Peter's pretty sure none of them have handled an Infinity Stone as a collective, let alone as an individual.

Ms. Reilly admits he might be right. She appreciates Peter's efforts to stop them. She also thinks it's amusing that he's confident enough to fight six women without fear of hurting them. But then, if they're truly evil, they've been hurt to such an extent that one more punch won't make that much of a difference, right?

Peter shrugs. He's never thought about that, but...it makes sense.

Ms. Reilly just hopes Peter gets to the Sacrilegious Six before they get to her or Liz. That'd certainly be a dream come true for both her and Liz.

Peter looks up. He asks what Liz Allan has to do with this.

Ms. Reilly giggles, and reveals that she didn't know either, until the day before yesterday. Liz witnessed a murder in Oregon City, and SHIELD's protecting her in a cabin in Toynbee's twin town, Humboldt.

Peter remembers the newspaper headline Ms. Potts read back in New York. So, it was LIZ who witnessed Sandgirl's and Huntress's attack on that ex-husband in Oregon City... Peter hoped it wasn't. Although that's not to say he's ENTIRELY disappointed...

Ms. Reilly smiles, and sees that Peter longs for her softer parts. She reaches towards Peter, with her huge hand...

Peter tries to walk away, down her leg. He's not sure if he can do this to his Uncle Ben yet.

Peter gets to her knee. It's a long way down her lower leg...and he's almost forgotten he's Spider-Man...for some reason...

Ms. Reilly tells him not to worry about that. She pinches him between her huge thumb and index finger, peels her top away from her right boob, and leaves Peter just inside. It's really warm in there. Peter would love to stay...

Ms. Reilly assures Peter that she's over Ben Parker. She's ready to move on. Her lonely parts are ready for some man flesh again. They're ready for some mite-sized cougar bait...

She presses her finger against where he is, beneath her top. Peter still doesn't get why he doesn't suffocate, or hurt when she does that...

Ms. Reilly sings an aria to him. Peter had no idea Ben Parker's widow had such an enriched voice...

She stands, and takes off her top. Peter slips down her boob...but somehow stops, before falling off.

Peter hasn't seen Ms. Reilly so happy since...Uncle Ben was alive. But then, he was never around for these parts; hence, he's never seen Ms. Reilly this happy.

Ms. Reilly snores. Her chest rises up and down. At that, shockwaves broadside her boobs from below and above. Peter might fall if this keeps up too long...

Peter wakes. He's still in Ms. Reilly's bra. He's still in his briefs. And he's still hard.

Far away, Ms. Reilly finishes her bath. She's in a towel. She stands in the floor center, and lets it fall. Peter ogles her nude body, for the first time in a long time.

He REALLY loves what he sees. He sure hopes Ms. Reilly doesn't remarry for a LONG time...

She pulls her bra off the folding mirror-the one Peter's watching all of this from. She puts it on. Peter's soon wedged between Ms. Reilly's right boob and the cup on her bra. Behind her, she hooks it in place.

She adjusts it, after she gets it on her. Inside her bra cup, these are some of the BEST earthquakes Peter has ever lived through.

He's never been to the West Coast. These are the ONLY earthquakes he's ever lived through...

Peter misses the dream he just had. But for now, he will SO settle for this as a consolation... He snoozes, like a reborn teenager, inside Ms. Reilly's rack. With luck, his presence will go unnoticed.

With more luck, she'll have another interaction with Liz before SHIELD or the Avengers catch the Sacrilegious Six. And Peter SO anticipates that...


	13. Chapter 13

The SacrilegeMobile roams the land, shaped like a metallic wolf. It roams across North America, in search for another shot at the chickenhawk it couldn't kill at the band camp in Cedar Rapids.

The Sacrilegious Six soon learn that killing men while the size of a flea is even funner than doing it full-size. To them, it almost feels like giant-slaying...

The SacrilegeMobile roams to the West Coast. It leaps off a cliff. While in freefall, it shapeshifts into a falcon-with the team still aboard. It spreads its wings, and flies across the Pacific.

This is Manchuria. It's a vast open amount of space, up for grabs by its stronger neighbors, for there are rumors that get spread throughout the region that neither Manchuria nor Korea are strong enough to protect themselves.

The SacrilegeMobile is still airborne. Not for long. It descends, and shapeshifts into a boar. It snorts, and roams across the Manchurian plain.

To the Sacrilegious Six, is a strange ride. The wolf and the boar are both bumpy; they're not complaining about that...anymore. But the wolf and the boar are two different creatures-and the AI knows it. But at least they're both forbidden by Islamic/Jewish law, and THAT'S what makes the Sacrilegious Six so sinister.

In forty years, there's probably going to be a war here. But fortunately for the Sacrilegious Six, no one on the team is Russian or Japanese...or Manchurian or Korean, for that matter.

Now, this is Norway. The fjords and cliffs are a sight to behold. Across the ocean lies Beerenberg, an active volcano. Fortunately though, the Sacrilegious Six's next target has enough common sense to not hunt reindeer near a volcano.

And no, there are no dragons living in it, contrary to popular Old Norse myth. Then again, some things aren't ENTIRELY impossible...

And, it's back to the American Frontier. The SacrilegeMobile is a falcon again. It lands, and becomes the wolf again. The wolf roams the land, in search of one of any of the four final targets.

Luckily, there were no witnesses to the other ex-husbands' murders. OTOH, that's probably because the Sacrilegious Six were the size of fleas while committing them...

If only they could've thought of that before going after the pizzeria in Queens. Oh well; no plan goes perfectly... But then, neither one of them will be singing that tune half as sweetly if Allan's or Reilly's testimony goes as far as getting them all back to where they were to begin with: female inmates on death row. And then everything they've worked so hard for, and come so far for, will be in shambles.

The sun has set over the Frontier. The wolves howl. The dust clouds float through the air. The dry forests whisper.

The SacrilegeMobile has slowed. Its sensors, in the form of the wolf's nose, probe the surrounding areas for traces of Spider-Man, Ms. Allan, Ms. Reilly, or the final husband. The witnesses haven't been around; a dog's nose would be useless in finding them. But last the Sacrilegious Six checked, the final husband had a scent-and as far as his relevant ex-wife is concerned, it is NOT, and was NEVER, by any means, a pleasant one.

High above, the moon shines brightly. The SacrilegeMobile is metallic; the moon on its metal's breast gives the luster of midday, for it is beneath. Not the wolf's breast, of course; the SacrilegeMobile would have to be upside down/on its back for that. But whoever wrote "Twas the Night Before Christmas" sure had a crappy way with words...

Good thing he didn't write any more poems besides that. He...DIDN'T write other poems, did he?

In the shadows, a female wolf lurks, having abandoned her pack. Her eyes barely glow.

She can see the SacrilegeMobile. He looks interesting. He's handsome. Could he possibly be the lone wolf whose administration could possibly be more slack-cutting than that of the awful alpha who killed her favorite mate, just so he could be in charge?

She chases him through the woods. Moments pass before Trachtenberg turns around, in the rear saddle, and sees that the SacrilegeMobile has a tail...besides its rudder, of course.

Kershen, the driver, raises the throttle. The SM runs faster. So does the black bitch tailing them. Trachtenberg can't tell in the dark, but she thinks she might be gaining on them...

Oseku turns around in her saddle, and sets her shades to nightvision. To her dismay, the she-wolf IS gaining on them. And she's got black fur; which means she's NOT Shakira. But even if she weren't an anachronism here, the nearest border of Latin America a hundred leagues south of here...and the border to Colombian Panama is even farther south than that.

It's time to take a stand. Oseku orders the team to arms, and to stations.

The SM spins, and bares its metallic fangs. Like fleas, the Sacrilegious Six assembles, in combat formation, on its head.

The she-wolf stops. She whimpers, and assumes a prone position.

Alas, the Sacrilegious Six were raised Islamic/Jewish; they don't know as much about dog sociology as they'd like. They come from a world where women should, if they're not, just as capable of beating the shit out of anyone as a male jihadi on a stormy Ramadan.

Kershen advances past the front line. She's got her crossbow. She crouches still, and aims at the poor bitch's pressure point. As big as the black bitch is, she's clearly less threatening than before.

Kershen fires. At her size, it takes the bolt some time to reach its target. But when it does, it hits with more force than a .243 bullet at point-blank. She whimpers, and falls over.

SheVulture takes flight. She flies in a circle over the hurt she-wolf, and unleashes a barrage of rotary cannon fire over her coat. She'd look like one of those cows, in _O Brother, Where Art Thou_, who George Nelson will shoot with the machine gun while avoiding an impending police chase. But for now, the Sacrilegious Six should be thankful that the Great Depression won't happen for another seven decades...even if the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_ have long been written.

Mystria imagines herself into a phoenix, flies over the hurt wolf, dives, and sets her on fire. She yelps, and squalls in pain.

Elektra raises her sais, and summons some lightning. She strikes the she-wolf with a huge bolt of it.

Worked up, Oseku inflates the balloon in her prosthetic back. She floats over to the burned, shot, struck she-wolf, and lands on a place on her neck where the phoenix fire has gone out. She elongates her prosthetic tentacles. Below, the she-wolf's eyes look up at them, in terror...

Splitting the tentacles two ways, Oseku wraps them around the she-wolf's neck. And she squeezes. With her sais, Elektra strikes Oseku's prosthetics with more lightning, hastening the she-wolf's asphyxiation. She does this until Mysteria whispers, and warns her that she'll bring the she-wolf back to life if she hits the wrong cells with electricity.

At long last, Oseku feels the bitch die. She releases the power over her prosthetic tentacles, and they all contract back to their regular lengths. For the honor of Afroasians everywhere, they've killed a bitch. Nevermore will she defile an unsuspecting Muslim or Jew, anywhere.

"I don't think that was necessary," Marya warns them. "I think she was backing down."

Trachtenberg chuckles. "She would've started chasing us again as soon as we would've tried to ride away. That's how the female mind works. We would all know; we're all females."

"Not bitches, we're not."

All eyes stare at Marya.

"I mean...we ARE bitches, but... Look, wolves might be degenerate, but they have souls."

Oseku returns. "It doesn't matter anymore. Good or evil, that one's soul is history. Now, as memory serves, we were hunting our ex-husbands to extinction?"

They all mount up. With Kershen back at the reins, they ride away.

Hours pass. The she-wolf's corpse stays where it is. The moon sets. A cooler wind blows through the forest.

From the shadows, another wolf emerges. He's as tall as a horse at the shoulders. He's got longer fangs. A collar, made of chrome metal, hangs from his neck.

On the collar, an Asgardian symbol is branded. This wolf is a berserker...one that specializes in wolf-morphing.

He sees the she-wolf, with his glowing green eyes. He nudges her carcass with his paw. He moves his nose around it, checking for scents. He detects them. They're of human females. He'd expect them to be more pungent than his nose detects...

Whatever the case, he can tell that this death was of no blight's doing. Versus that, his eyes change, and glow red.

_Bitch killer_, he whispers telepathically, _consider my following signal both a warning, and a war cry!_ With that, he sits, cocks his head back, and howls.

All around him, far away, his brothers return the same howl. And the womanhunt for the six bitch-killers is on.


	14. Chapter 14

Peter isn't sure how...but he gets away from Ms. Reilly's chest just long enough to spy on SHIELD. (Hmm, interesting; he spied on spies, didn't he? Never mind; HYDRA could very well do the exact same thing...) As Peter suspected, SHIELD's been following the Sacrilegious Six.

Although HYDRA might be less likely to do the same thing than twenty years ago. From what Peter's heard, the German states of northern Europe are a lot stronger than they were after Napoleon. In fact, there's a movement over there that's pushing to unite the German states, and federate the Second Reich... Peter wouldn't encourage it, though; German men tend to get dangerous when they get excited.

Flash Thompson is no German. But hotdamn if he didn't know how to really hurt Peter before the latter became Spider-Man...

Peter also finds out, on a different note, that Ironheart, of the West Coast Avengers, has been reported MIA by the team's leaders, Hawkeye and Mockingbird. Peter chuckles; if Ironheart never reports back, Morgan Stark just might get her wish after all...

Pertaining to the Sacrilegious Six, Peter finds out that the chickenhawk he saved in Iowa is dead. And, the world's reporting obituaries have two new stories to report. One is that of a man in Manchuria, who appeared to lead a quiet life, although none of his neighbors or any of the locals, of course, knew much about his past. The second is of a man in Norway with a similar profile-and his friends admitted that they couldn't imagine why on Midgard he wasn't a Scandinavist, like them...

And in both cases, the coroner analyzes that their killers were very small creatures with an insane violent streak. In those cold climates, viruses are the usual suspect...if only the coroners knew of a virus whose virion was that big, or didn't need power in excessive numbers to take down a human-sized victim...

No one's located the Sacrilegious Six's next target. But there've been whispering rumors of a man in a small town in Deseret. There, they called him Metcalf. SHIELD has no intel on what his name was in his days as a revered official of Afroasia. He was a likeable fellow, who spend much of his time with ragged white supremacist youths. The Mormon locals couldn't tell if he was codepending or rehabilitating them. His tutelage seemed to have both effects on them...from time to time. But then one night, he went hunting with them in the desert, and he never came back.

Some of the white supremacist boys did...and do. But they've laughed and changed the subject every time someone's asked about the kind old man...who had WAY too much vision to be a real Mormon...which is astounding, because many Mormons' visions are the envy of the bureaucrats in Washington who wish that the LDS Church would die with the federal polygamy ban.

Slingshot reaches for a cup of coffee-that tiny Peter is perched on. Peter swings away just in time, to avoid being crushed by Slingshot's metal arm. She has two. And, although Peter doesn't usually see it, she's an Inhuman speedster.

Slingshot sips the coffee, and sighs. "Keep tabs on that Mormon settlement," she orders, in her hot Colombian accent. "If there's so much as a Klan meeting anywhere near there, I want to know about it. Director Mackenzie wants the security we have around the ex-_tia_ and ex-_novia_ of the late Spider-Man tighter than _una cucaracha_'s elbow room!"

Ah, how Peter loves Slingshot's hot Colombian voice... But now's not the time to dwell; Liz's in the next town.

Ms. Reilly returns to the Mormon chapel. Unbeknownst to her, her tiny ex-nephew is freeloading just inside her bra cup...

She talks to the priest, as he sits in the confessional. Oh, how Peter wishes his ex-aunt would sing more praises to her ex-nephew's sexualization...

And, Liz is back too. Good. She's the real reason Peter came along. If only he could peel himself away from gazing upon his ex-aunt's aesthetics...

They share a pew. They talk. They brood over Peter. To Peter, this is fun...but nothing, of course, like getting to play Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and attend his own funeral.

And then, Ms. Reilly and Liz hold hands. This is Peter's chance. As stealthily as a mite, Peter swings across the draw bridge while it's down. He perches on a ring on Liz's finger.

Or at least, he THINKS it's on Liz's finger. He explored the depths of Ms. Reilly's jewelry box the other day, and he's PRETTY sure he didn't find this one in it. And witness protection seems like an unwise place to buy new jewelry. Rephrase: Toynbee, Deseret seems like an unwise place to SELL new jewelry.

But just to be sure, Peter glides into Liz's low-cut. NOW he's right where he needs to be.

In the present day, I would not expect Peter to listen to Gary Allan music. Allan sings country music, and if Peter's anything like Elongated Man from the DC section of the multiverse, he thinks the genre is underevolved and underdeveloped.

(Or NON-evolved and NON-developed, as many of his peers at the high school in Queens would probably say...)

At long last, the women bid adieu, and part ways. Quake accompanies Liz back to Humboldt.

Hmm, Quake's low-cut looks nice today... But Peter mustn't; he's committed to Liz.

At long last, the young Mr. Parker has been reunited with his heart. If only Liz's family had moved to San Francisco instead of Oregon City; it would be the perfect occasion to compose a hit love song before Tony Bennett will get the chance in 100 years.

Yes, I know; Peter didn't leave his heart in Oregon City; Oregon City took it from him. But who's counting minutiae, anyway?


	15. Chapter 15

This is Humboldt, Deseret. Here, the streets are cleaner, and the store merchandise is nicer. At any moment, Peter expects the town to be racketeered, robbed, or otherwise bullied. Alas, in most cases, it would be a Hawkeye/Mockingbird job.

Quake returns Liz to her quarters. Like Ms. Reilly's, it's a lonely place south of town. Unlike Ms. Reilly's, there's a lake. And naturally, there are more boats cached behind the cabin.

Again, Spider-Man wouldn't recommend this. The boats would make perfect cloaks for the Sacrilegious Six's daggers.

Speaking of whom, Peter wonders about them. He wonders how often they've protected people since attending his funeral...

Liz knows she shouldn't... But it's a beautiful day, and humanity won't invent the sniper for another eight decades...

With Quake's help, she gets one of the boats. Liz puts herself on the lake. She rests in it. She's underdressed, and wearing orange.

As tiny as a mite, Peter basks in the utopia of his ex-girlfriend's biracial skin. He's hard. He wants her back. Alas, Oregon City is so far away from Queens, and Ms. Reilly and Morgan Stark, at least, will start missing him if...

OTOH, they do both think Peter's dead. Maybe Peter could... But then, Liz would have to consent to that. And then Peter would have to tell Liz he's been stalking her from a mite's eye view, and...

Do mites even have eyes, BTW?

Liz closes her eyes, and rests easy. Aloft, the sun tans her. Not that she needs it; her biracial heritage has forever branded her with the tan of dreams. This may be witness protection...but for the time being, Liz just wants to forget her life back in Oregon City, or that there are six dangerous bitches out there who want her flesh roasted on a shawarma spit.

She even wants to forget about the mysterious Lowell, with the perfect blond hair and the Gothic and white supremacy tattoos... The sex he wouldn't stop demanding... The peace and quiet she wouldn't get with him around... She hopes SHIELD never catches the Sacrilegious Six, and she hopes the Six get lost, and stay lost, while looking for her and Peter's ex-aunt...and the final ex-husband, from what Quake's told her.

Ashore, Quake fishes. Out here, any fish caught from the lake would be cheaper than one bought from the general store...if it was down there, and if it could be caught by an Inhuman SHIELD agent with vibration-control powers...

Ah, sweet reunion. At long last, Peter is reunited with his true love...

Without warning, Liz capsizes the boat, and swims away. Peter's abandoned in a pelagic desert of freshwater.

He struggles to put on his mask, and to activate his re-breather. By the time he can see and breathe, Liz's giant feet have vanished into the depths. Shucks; this was a divine moment for Peter. Now he can't swim fast enough to catch up with her.

KAREN blares an alarm. Peter looks around, for what she's so concerned about.

A giant shad specimen is speeding towards him. She opens her huge mouth, and prepares to receive Spider-Man.

JIT, Spider-Man shoots out a web, and reels himself onto the capsized boat's hull. The impregnable bait fish misses him by nths-on whoever's scale.

Once rested, Peter pulls off his mask, and wrings the water out. His heart is still throbbing.

Ashore, Quake's found a way to use her vibration control to isolate a sphere of water, with a walleye trapped in it. Quake geeks and gawks as she levitates the water to shore, and releases the walleye. The water spreads out, and the walleye flips and flops. Quake smiles, places her foot against the dying fish's side, and uses her vibrations to rob the fish of its sense of balance until it dies of suffocation.

"Great," Peter complains. "Now I'm a shad to a shad."

Later in the day, Liz bathes in the tub. The soap and clean water feel good to her. She closes her eyes, and chants. Her chants are so seductive, the Mormon nuns would envy her.

Do Mormons have nuns? Sure seems like they should...

Through the windows, the dim yellow light of dusk adds a certain stability to the cabin's interior. It's only broken by the occasional shadow of a patrolling SHIELD agent outside.

Liz surfaces, and abandons the tub. Her nude biracial body is like a plethora of waterfalls, as the tub's water partially floods the bathroom floor.

Down there, Peter shoots a web just in time to avoid getting swept away by her excess water's current. After he wipes his eyes an spews the soap out of his mouth, Peter's just in time to see Liz wrap a towel around herself.

He rides the nail of her big toe into the bedroom. She sits at the desk, and uses a quill to write a letter.

From the chair's wood, Peter swings up to her ass...and then up the chair's back to her neck. He leaps, and clings to the back of her neck.

Liz hesitates. She closes her eyes, smiles, and writes the letter more at ease.

She seems to like what Peter's doing. Excited about his success, Peter lowers himself to the middle of her back. With Karen's help, he vibrates himself while clinging to the center of her back. Liz relaxes even more-and chants romantically-while finishing her letter to...someone likely back in Oregon City.

Peter doesn't know if she's capable of forgiving her father. But if she doesn't, she's a truely bluely devout American patriot...who just happens to be biracial...

But then, America's a melting pot, isn't it? Or rather, it will be by the last two decades of this century...when immigrants from South Europe, East Europe, and East Asia swamp the coasts, and leave a bigger desert for Germanic peoples' kids...

A lot of failed French politicians will probably seek asylum here too, once Napoleon III's proud regime loses the Franco-Prussian War...

Ah, sweet paradise. Someday, when Liz becomes free of the surly bonds of her mother, and he becomes free of...his ex-aunt's surly boobs-bonds, Peter WILL marry Liz...

Morgan may be rich. But Liz's skin and hair are SO exotic...


	16. Chapter 16

It's nighttime in the Utah Rockies. Fog had flooded them. A full moon blazes high ahead. It gets spooky out here.

High over some of it, a statue towers. It's the Capitoline Wolf. It's MUCH bigger than the one from Rome. Around it, strange wolves howl.

Around a mountain, a strange wolf lumbers. He wears a collar made of forged iron. He's got a wild boar in his jaws. At the shoulder, he's taller than a horse.

His collar is branded with the Asgardian roundel. Not only is he not from Deseret...he's not from Midgard.

He passes a pile of boar carcasses. He swings his onto the pile, and lumbers past.

He's a Grandson of Fenris. And he's not the only one.

Long ago, Mormons settled around here. Most were loved by their families. Others were not so ideal. The Mormons' excommunication rate should be astounding...if it ever has been.

Long before their arrival out here, there was turmoil on Asgard. The berserkers are the spec-ops of their army. Some attain victory in battle by losing control, and staying out of control until all of the enemy is slain. Others take this a step farther, and shape-shift into beasts once lost of control.

Sometime after the Mormons settled here, Deseret was invaded...by the Marauders. Most Mormons are scions of white supremacy; the Asgardian Einherjar saw an opportunity. A band of berserkers, who now call themselves the Grandsons of Fenris, traveled to Deseret, at great risk to themselves and their people, and expelled Midgard of the Marauders' expansion. They morphed into wolves and bears, and had the mountains, deserts, softwood forests, and lakes cleaned up in no time.

Alas, by the time the Grandsons finished, they discovered they couldn't get back to Asgard. So they cloaked their existence from the rest of Midgard, and settled here.

Since then, they've become a very special servant to excommunicated and evicted Mormons. Like generous she-wolves, they take in lost travelers, and forge them into Asgardians.

Up here on a peak, this neat gadget of Asgardian origin is a body-forge. This is the first step, of how lost travelers become blonde, redheaded, or light brunet Asgardians with blue, grey, or green eyes. When they go into the forge, they're excommunicated Mormons without a prayer in Deseret-or likely in the Union, once they must reveal their Mormon resumes. When they come out...well, let's just say they're "one of the guys."

Not all who settle here can animal-morph. But those who can usually transform into lobos, kit foxes, bears, seals, sea lions, ferrets, badgers, spotted skunks, coatis, and ringtails.

The lobos, coatis, seals, and sea lions are social. With respect to their fellow Grandsons-animal-morphing and not-they stick to, and stick up for, their packs.

Life here in Ulvgaard isn't much more active than it is on Asgard. Most people here are usually either napping or hunting. Those who can't animal-morph forge axes and hammers. The animal-morphing berserkers haven't needed barding in a while.

From their hunts, the lobos bring back the carcasses of dead ungulates, rodents, rabbits, hares, and game fowl. The coatis bring back giant spiders, snakes, and toads. The seals and sea lions bring back, from the depths of the great lake, sturgeons, trout, walleyes, saugers, and bass. There's a huge pile of each where their respective packs rest.

The non-animal-morphing berserkers take some of the game off the piles, and butcher it. Many of them brew ales...with big and scary iron-forged brewing machinery.

In his blond human shape, Lowell, the boy who saw Liz before the Sacrilegious Six attacked her, carries a dead wolf through Ulvgaard. (It's a real wolf; not a berserker.) In his bare feet, he walks the many long narrow blackened paths towards someone who might know a certain scent on the wolf carcass better than he does. From what he's heard, he's a relatively new addition to Ulvgaard...especially considering how old he is...

He passes two lobo/berserkers, playing tug-of-war with a long tibia. They stop as Lowell passes them, and appear to have a moment of silence.

Around here, the real wolves are like sheep to the Asgardian shepherds. (The excommunicated Mormons probably taught them that...)

Lowell descends into a cave, thinking the sniffer is inside. He hesitates when he sees a Malayan sun bear slumbering inside. The bear blinks, and looks at Lowell. Embarrassed, Lowell apologizes, creeps out, and scurries off on his way.

From the top of a rock, a ringtail watches Lowell as he travels a path. He follows him down to the lake.

He descends a hill, towards the great lake. A pile of seals, with big noses, slumber on the shore. They barely acknowledge Lowell as he approaches. He sets the wolf carcass down, and takes a few steps back.

"Excuse me," he calls into the pile of sleeping bodies. "Melchizedek?"

The seals keep snoring. Right, Lowell remembers, forgetting your old name is part of the transfiguration process here.

"Metcalf," he calls.

From the pile of bodies, a bull seal emerges. He's much bigger than most of the others. He stands on his belly, and bellows. Lowell bows low, beneath his tall, tall chest.

Nearby, a spotted skunk/berskerker crawls into the midst. He seems curious...and prepared to defend Lowell, if he must...

"The scents on this carcass," Lowell speaks, "demand thy nose's services."

The great bull seal lowers himself. He hangs his nose over the carcass, and sniffs around. He should get a fair sample of more than what's there. That's one big nose...one that's probably attracted one or several mates since his body-forging...

The bull hesitates. He blinks, and fidgets his whiskers.

Spontaneously, he rolls over sideways, like a rolling log, until he hits a cliffside. He lies right-side up, and bellows a cloud of poison gas. Lowell is confused. He watches as Metcalf transforms into an old Asgardian merman, with blond hair.

From a hole in the ground, a badger/berserker crawls. It seems he heard Metcalf's racket.

"Uh," he groans, "I never assimilate to that new ability. Even as a Muslim, I was sickened by dogs...and creatures that remind one of the same..."

Lowell watches. Around him, the rocks that Metcalf now sit in are like a rocky chair to him. He happily slaps his tail against the rocks under him. He seems comfy...yet paranoid.

"I know one of those scents," he confirms. "Tis of my ex-wife. One of many, I had. My home hosted a vast harem in my older old life."

A ferret/berserker crawls out of a hole. He seems curious.

"Thine ex-wife," Lowell repeats. "What business brings her to Deseret, and why does she kill wolves?"

"That, Master Lowell, I am ignorant of. As dangerous as she was even then, she does not strike me as the dame who would fear wolves...for Islam or for herself."

"So, she hunted them? Why did she not collect the carcass?"

A kit fox/berserker wanders into the midst. He has big ears, and can't help overhearing.

"That I also do not know. But if she is still in this wild, I cannot imagine that whatever business she has with me will end benevolently, by any of our standards."

Farther away, a lobo/berserker with red fur returns from a hunt. He leaves a boar's carcass on the lobos' game pile, and wanders off.

Somehow, he couldn't tell the boar's made of metal. On its back, the miniaturized Sacrilegious Six hang upside down from their respective saddles. (The SacrilegeMobile is upside down while leaning against the side of the pile.) Around them, this seems like a shithole of a place to look for an ex-husband.

"He always did stink up his chambers when he was depressed," Elektra grumbles. "He didn't really eat pork, though..."

"None of us did," Mystria needlessly reminds everyone. "Allah-damn Islam to Jahannam!"

"Why do I get the feeling," Sandgirl poses, "that even if the last ex-husband was in this labrynth of macabre, we'd still know him?"

"We might not," Dr. Octopussy laments. "But we can't afford to leave him alive any more than we can Spider-Man, need I not remind any of you." She looks around at all of them. "And if I do, I might as well as rue the day me and She-Vulture decided to spare the rest of you the remorseless executioner's ax back in Afroasia-the one that the Caliph himself once doomed us all to...all for the love of freer women."

"And ham," Huntress adds. "And vodka. And puppies. And brothels..."

"Pipe down, Huntress," She-Vulture demands. "It's already bad enough that Deseret's a dry county."

"Country," Sandgirl corrects her.

"Of course," She-Vulture whispers darkly. "_Mazel tov_."

They all sigh, and dismount. Ulvgaard is a big place...and at their size, it'll take a very long time to search. But the two witnesses are too well-protected, and it's senseless to look for Spider-Man when they already know-or think they know-where the last ex-husband is. With luck, they won't end up as maggots in a berserker's stomach...or, more embarrassing, the last ex-husband's...


	17. Chapter 17

It's dawn over Humboldt, Deseret. The town barely rises...as there are few settlers to help it along.

Farther south, SHIELD agents still guard Liz's cabin. Quake shakily-no play on words intended-resists the temptation to play rooster with her vibration-control powers.

In the bedroom, Liz slumbers. The covers are off the bed, and she's in the buff.

Tiny Peter lies, in paradise in the vast open space between her navel and the waist of her lace panties-the ONLY thing she wears. He's SO close to making a family with her... And yet, this impulse he must resist. She and he were, shall we say, NOT on the best of terms when she and her mother left Queens for Oregon City...

He feels like telling her that he's Spider-Man. But first, he'd have to tell her that he's here, and that he has an indefinite size issue...

KAREN announces herself, shattering Peter's dream bubble. Peter screams.

Over there, Liz snorts as her eyes pop open. Peter freezes.

Alas, Liz closes them back, and heaves a huge sigh-raising and lowering the twin mountains on her chest in the process. With her giant-yet-beautiful hand, she adjusts her panties; Peter has to roll across her lower belly to avoid her hand.

Frustrated, Peter demands to know why KAREN interrupted him...although he wasn't really doing anything when she spoke. She apologizes, but she's detected a possible threat just outside the cabin.

Peters asks if SHIELD can deal with it. KAREN isn't sure; SHIELD isn't detecting them, or preparing for their attack.

Peter hates to leave Liz. And yet, he'd also hate it if this threat, what or whoever it was, hurt Liz because he wasn't active enough to be there on the front lines to oppose it.

Peter swings onto her upper leg, crawls up it, leaps off her knee, spreads the wingsuit in his suit, and glides across the bedroom, to the windowsill. With his spider-strength, the opens the sash just enough to crawl through it, does so, spins a parachute with his webs, and catches a ride on a breeze.

On the upside, Peter DOES get a quick peek down Quake's blouse, as his web-chute is gliding past the upper slopes of her rack. On the downside, it is just a quick peek-and she won't protect Liz from this new threat if he doesn't try.

Spider-Man follows KAREN to the threat's landing grounds. Within range, he releases the web-chute, and glides towards it via the wingsuit...

From out of nowhere, Iron Man snatches Spider-Man from the sky. Spider-Man wrestles with him...until he realizes that his former mentor is...alive.

"Mr. Stark?! How..."

"It's good to see you alive, Spider-Man," FRIDAY, the AI in the suit, says to Peter on the suit pilot's behalf. "Please wait until we've landed for someone to explain."

The mysterious Iron Man takes Spider-Man to the top of a peak. Once Spider-Man realizes his ride's intent, he abandons her, and glides to a strategic place to receive her.

All around, it seems someone's been busy. There's a cart, and a pair of jackasses (actual ones; not Democratic politicians), and enough manhunting equipment to accommodate for at least two people for the long-term.

Peter gets a closer look at the paperwork they've been using to hunt the man, if you will. He's relieved to find out that this mysterious Iron Man hasn't been manhunting him. But then, it'd be insane if they were. As far as most of the sane world is concerned, Spider-Man is dead.

On the upside, it appears they're hunting the Sacrilegious Six-like Spider-Man. On the downside, Peter does not yet know if the enemy of his enemy is his ally...

"Mr. Parker! Congrats on the survival!"

Maria Hill, a former head of SHIELD, now a fugitive spy, approaches Parker. She's Parker's size-aside from the whole "adult vs child" factor.

At first Peter is confused, because he thinks he's been re-sized to normal...

An eagle flies over both of them, causing Peter to scream. Now Peter's even more confused...

"Ms. Hill?! How are you...!"

"Small? Easy; I called in a favor from the Secret Avengers."

"How'd you figure out I was alive? How'd you find me?"

"First answer: we saw what you did in Cedar Rapids. Second answer: we imagined that if you knew where SHIELD was hiding your ex-aunt, you'd try to go there to protect her." She raises her brows, smiles, and changes her tone. "We just...didn't think you were macho enough to try to cuddle with your ex-girlfriend in your state." She looks up at the mysterious Iron Man. "Looks like I owe you that doubloon after all, Ms. Williams!"

The mysterious Iron Man-who's really Ironheart-lands nearby. Her helmet vanishes; a black girl's head is apparent.

"What can I say? White boys are always down with perving on the biracial."

The new trio sits on a bluff to discuss what will happen next. For this, Peter hangs upside-down in a sitting position.

"So," Hill elaborates, "all of the ex-husbands have been killed, except one. From what we've found, the Sacrilegious Six still hasn't found him."

"Don't get your hopes up, though," Williams recommends. "That could literally change at any sec."

Peter's eyes are closed. For this, he relies on his spider-hearing.

"Do we know why they're widowing themselves? Do their husbands have fortunes they want for themselves?"

"That's not practical. Their ex-husbands were stripped of their wealth sometime before their exiles. The Sacrilegious Six are no ordinary Band of Bonnies; they're not after money. They're after something MUCH more fashionable..."

"They've already told me what," Peter reveals. "Somewhere in the woods, Mr. Stark has built a steam factory with the Reality Stone. The Six plan to use the Reality Stone to transform Deseret into some kind of Jannah on Earth. They said that their ex-husbands had a better vision for Afroasia, which is the reason why their people exiled them."

Hill gapes. "O my god; if they plan to use the Reality Stone, then the whole world is in serious danger."

"Tell me about it," Williams agrees. She looks around. "I think we should tell Clint and Bobbi. I'll be back..."

Hill raises her arm, calling off Williams's messaging trip. "We don't know where the Six are. If we try to attack them when they have the Stone, they might not take it maturely. Whatever it is we do next, we've got to do it in baby steps."

Williams sighs; she studies Peter. "How'd you get small, anyway?"

"Mystria," Peter answers. "Or at least, that's how it happened the first time. When I met them, the Reality Stone was there, and for a short time, it re-sized me back to normal. But then they cornered me; I shrunk myself back to elude them."

Williams chuckles. "I would've wished they were blind."

"Daredevil's blind," Peter reminds her. "Doesn't mean I'd want to get stuck in a cage with him."

"That was dangerous, Peter," Hill tells him. "I know you're a man, but the Reality Stone is one of the six most powerful objects in the universe."

"For the record, I didn't try to resize myself back to normal when I discovered Stark's imaginary steam factory. It just...saw right through me, somehow... But I did shrink myself to get away. I tried to only use part of the Stone, so I wouldn't kill myself while escaping."

"Smart," Williams admits. "Those Infinity Stones don't mess around."

Peter sighs. "Using the Reality Stone to create Jannah on Earth makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why they'd kill their ex-husbands before making their visions a reality. Wives usually make their husbands' dreams come true to share with them-not to take from them."

Williams chuckles. "Poor Mr. Lover. He can't even imagine why a girl would hate her husband. I'm starting to wonder how you survived your encounter with the Sacrilegious Six at all."

"We've found that out, actually," Hill reveals. "In order to turn Deseret into exactly what their exes had envisioned, the Sacrilegious Six need the blood of all six of the vision's creators. They don't need to kill them; they just need their blood. With their blood, they could use the Reality Stone to wish their ex-husbands back to life."

Williams scoffs. "I wouldn't recommend it."

"We need to find them before that happens," Peter urges. "We've got to get to Mr. Stark's campfire before they do!"

"Relax, Peter. As much luck as we've all had finding the six ex-husbands, I doubt we'll have anything serious to worry about for a while."

Alas, Hill couldn't be farther from correct. Tonight, the SacrilegeMobile will deploy a bionic nanobot. It'll look and move like a flea. It'll wait for the Six's command...who, as we speak, scout all of Ulvgaard, in the guise of fleas on the lobo/berserkers' backs.

All Metcalfe has to do is pose as an Asgardian merman for as long as it takes. And since he seems to enjoy his baths with the ladies more than he should, especially in the heat of the day, the Sacrilegious Six should only take until then to find their quarry.

With their target acquired, and being too small to take on such a big man in a hand-to-hand fight, the Six will deploy the nanite. It'll hitch a ride on She-Vulture. It'll HALO-jump onto the seal/berserker's back. Once landed, all it'll need is a blood sample. Drunk on beer and the lake's soul-altering nourishment, the other seals won't suspect a thing. In their bad eyesight, the nanite will take what little it needs-enough to potentially destroy the world, and hitch the next Mystria ride out of Ulvgaard.

Alas, the plotting Sacrilegious Six now have everything they need. Now they have a dusk appointment with Stark Industries' campfire in the woods.

There'll be no dawn for Deseret-or Earth, if things go badly for both sides at the same time.


	18. Chapter 18

Spider-Man, Hill, and Ironheart scurry back to the campfire in the woods. Spidey and Ironheart get there first.

On a pine branch, they wait. Hill straggles in many minutes later, aboard an experimental hovercraft. She acknowledges their admiring stares with disgust, as she sends the hovercraft away.

"For the record," she reminds them, "I don't have superpowers."

They acknowledge the campfire. Williams and Hill stare.

"Where's the attendant? Why isn't the fire spreading."

"It's not really a fire," Peter tells them. "It's an illusion concealing the Reality Stone."

"How do we get in?"

"We walk in."

Ironheart starts to take off; Hill raises her arm, and calls her off. "If the Six are in there, they might be plotting an ambush."

"Not as likely as they are changing reality as we know it," Peter reminds them. "And as far as I can tell, reality still feels familiar."

Williams chuckles. "If we were ants."

"Deseret is still the same," FRIDAY tells them, from Ironheart's suit. "Islam, Judaism, Afroasia and Jannah are all still strange concepts in Salt Lake City, that what my latest information can report."

"So either they're not here yet," Hill speculates, "or they're plotting to ambush us. But if they are," she looks at her two companions, "Mr. Parker might stand a better chance in there this time, now that we're here."

"They're all women," Peter reminds them. "But as far as savagery goes, they're some of the scariest I've met."

"We believe you," Hill says. "We've heard about what they've done...through the press, and through eavesdropping on SHIELD."

"Are they coming to help us? Are the West Coast Avengers?"

Williams scoffs.

"No one's promised anything. But either we do this, or we die trying. If we go in there, we might not come out alive. Riri, can you take us in there?"

Williams sighs. Her helmet materializes, and conceals her head. "Let's not waste time getting in there."

Ironheart levitates. Holding Hill in front of her and with Spider-Man on her back, she flies towards the fire. Once out of the treetop, Spider-Man leaps, and uses his wingsuit to travel the rest of the way. After that, everything becomes hazy to all three.

When the cloud rolls back, they've all been re-sized to normal. They look around. None of them are used to it. It seems being small took a bigger toll on all of them than it felt at the time.

Ahead, the steam factory is still there. And near them, by the front gate, a big sign that says STARK INDUSTRIES stands.

"Mr. Stark never told me about this," Hill gapes.

"Me neither," Williams confesses. "He was my mentor..."

"The experience and chagrin," Peter tells her, "were both mutual the first time I was here. And now that I'm back," he looks around in awe, "they still are..."

"Okay, take it all in," Hill urges. "We're here for the Reality Stone."

All three of them scream, as the Reality Stone appears from nowhere, and presents itself to them. Behind it, the factory has vanished. Around, it's darker now.

They stare at the Stone. The Stone alters its shape, imitates hands, and offers them to them, as if expecting to be clapped in irons.

"Riri," Hill mutters, "did you bring the jar?"

"How naive do you think I am, Ms. Hill?"

From a compartment in her suit, Williams fetches a high-tech jar. She holds it in her hand, and presses a lever on it down with her thumb. One destructively powerful billow at a time, the Reality Stone submits to its new prison. It's rather obedient, for an Infinity Stone...

Around, the dark red-lit curtain fades. The jar fills, and seals itself closed. There's bare earth where the campfire once burned perpetually. No Union soldier could've cleaned up better after his unit's fires.

"We gotta get this to West Coast Avengers HQ," Williams speculates. "Or better yet, SHIELD's protecting Peter's ex-aunt and ex-girlfriend a lot nearer by..."

"Sorry," a strange voice interrupts them, "but we regret to inform you all that the generator of our ex-husbands' vision is NOT up for grabs."

The Six have arrived. They've all assumed their normal sizes.

She-Vulture lands from the sky. Mystria lands, as a sphinx, and imagines herself into Achilles. Elektra emerges, as electricity, from the xylem in the pine trees, and materializes into herself, sais drawn. Sandgirl rolls across the ground around the trio, as sand grains, weaves herself into a sand sculpture, and materializes into herself. Huntress swings down from a tree she's in.

Dr. Octopussy descends, via her octopus prosthetics, from two trees she's in. She stops halfway, hangs from two of her prosthetics, and imitates dancing cobras with her other two.

"We've come too far and killed too many to fail," Oseku tells them. "Hard to say, but we're all PRETTY sure that you all know we're not bluffing." She nods at all three of them. "Am I right?"

Williams clutches the jar with the Reality Stone in her Ironheart gauntlet. Aside from that, neither she, Hill, nor Peter move a muscle.


	19. Chapter 19

Spider-Man, Maria Hill, and Ironheart are surrounded. Ironheart's got the Reality Stone trapped in her gauntlet. Everywhere, the Sacrilegious Six is poised. They're after the Reality Stone...

"This is an Infinity Stone," Hill tells them. "You'll destroy the world with it!"

"There are six of us," Dr. Octopussy sneers, "and we've got Mystria with us. We like our chances."

"We don't. None of you are Eternals."

Ironheart still holds the jar with the Reality Stone. From its other end, her gauntlet siphons the Reality Stone into itself. Once the Stone is gone, the jar unfolds, and collapses itself into Ironheart's forearm. The gauntlet shapeshifts, to accommodate for the new power source that's been added to it.

Through his mask, Peter watches, and gapes. "What are you...?!"

"It's something I've been working on, for a worst-case scenario," Ironheart explains. "I don't expect it to work, but it'll be great if it does."

In the forest, they all hear a noise. They look around.

A hoverchair flies over the treetops, and lowers itself towards the center of the campfire's old clearing. A blond merman sits in it. The hoverchair is metal-forged, and bears an Asgardian roundel. He wears a VERY familiar necklace.

Elektra chuckles. "Hello, husband. Nice makeover. How's the beer, suckling peccary, lobo fur, and Aesir hooters?"

Metcalf grins. "Do I detect jealousy, dear wife?"

She folds her sai onto her forearm, and flips her ex-husband the bird.

"Excuse me," Spider-Man interrupts, "I don't mean to ruin an admirable inside joke, but...who are you?"

"I am Metcalf. I was once the husband of Dijana."

"I'M Dijana," Elektra loudly whispers, waving, "for those of you who don't know me by my old name."

"But you're white," Ironheart says. "The Six's husbands were Afroasian nobles."

"First correction: I am Asgardian now. I have joined a garrison of berserkers that dwells in the mountains here in Deseret. We call ourselves the Grandsons of Fenris. They recruited me, and I answered."

"How is it you're an Asgardian? We heard you were all Afroasian."

"The garrison has a forge. They transmutate foreign human recruits into Asgardians. They take what's strong, and empower it. This is my power, as Asgardian flesh deems it."

"Wow," Ironheart muses. "Sure hope the hoverchair didn't come out of the forge with you."

"Need I not specify why I need it?"

"The Six killed the rest of you," Hill reminisces. "Why did they leave you alive?"

"Because of what he's just told us," Dr. Octopussy says. "He's an Asgardian now. Alone, we could probably kill him with moderate ease. But he never leaves his garrison. And they're all Asgardian there. They would've defended him if we tried to kill him there-not that we understand why they would."

Ironheart chuckles. "Impressive. You're strong enough to use the Reality Stone, but you're not strong enough to whoop an Asgardian garrison's ass. You make less and less sense the more we get to know you!"

"You're not getting your blood back," Elektra tells him, "if that's why you've taken that VERY nice hoverchair all the way out here."

Around her, the other Six giggle.

"Of what blood do you speak?!" He blinks. "Whatever that matters, that is not why I have come. Thou and thy sisters in villainy have unlawfully slain a she-wolf. The caniform fauna in her habitat are subject to our garrison's protection. Thou and thy sisters in villainy owe us, the Grandsons of Fenris, the life of a she-wolf!"

"She was chasing us," Huntress says. "Some lesbians just don't understand the words 'I'm straight."

"My brothers in berserkergang partook in communion with her. She did not chase lesbians. She often shared her fantasy of submission to a he-wolf that put forth a lustrous light to match the moon's. We found her carcass in the woods of prompt, following twilight. From her ruins, the berserk nose of my seal discerned six scents. My berserk nose is absent...but my intuition messages me, and familiar fumes rise from six sources hence." He looks around at his ex-wife, and her so-called 'sisters in villainy.' "If thine cutlery did not end our she-wolf, then thou witnessed an atrocity, from which our garrison expects confession."

She-Vulture applauds, monotonously. "Encore, Fat Shakespeare. Sadly, my 'sisters and villainy' and I have unfinished business with the Reality Stone to attend to. Now, our failure to kill you the first time was required. But this time, it's mercy. Leave now, and you will not likely join your fellow nobles, our other ex-husbands, in Jahannam, where you all belong."

Metcalf sighs. "My brothers in vision were right. The easiest step of divorce really IS the signatures." He pulls a small horn from the arm of his hoverchair, and blows it.

Soon, the Sacrilegious Six themselves are surrounded. Creepy lobos and coatis, who all wear iron-forged collars that bear the Asgardian roundel, abandon their cover in the woods that surround. A few lone badgers, who wear the same collars, wander among them. A few lone ferrets, kit foxes, and ringtails, who lack legs and move like serpents, crawl across the ground, coil, and bare their fierce fangs...as the stubby chains jingle from their collars.

Humanoid berserkers arrive too, astride hardy and stubborn peccaries. Their mounts are barded. They wear iron-forged scale armor, and carry swords and spears. The breastplates of their armor bear the Asgardian roundel.

Abroad, a few skiffs prepare to provide air power. From them, a few goat-mounted humanoid berserkers jump, land in the trees, and travel in their tops, for more intimate close air support.

Hill gapes. Behind his mask, Spider-Man beams. Ironheart doesn't know if she can contain her excitement. Alas, she'd better; she'd hate to accidentally kill herself with her Reality Gauntlet.

Metcalf smiles, and looks down upon the Sacrilegious Six. "As much as I would love to help them capture you, I am in no state to fight." He powers his hoverchair. "I expect you to understand." With that, he flies away.

Furious, Elektra tries to overpower his chair with electricity. But by then, her ex-husband is out-of-range.

Sandgirl puts her hand on Elektra's bare shoulder, expecting to calm her. "That chair's an Asgardian gadget," she reminds her. "It's made of metal. For all we know or care, electricity only makes it stronger."

"He may be a fat glutton," Elektra spits bitterly. "But NO man can swallow the sun and expect to survive."

"Actually," Ironheart starts to say, before Hill elbows her in her exosuit's belly plate. Hill tries to hide it, but she broods over her elbow after having struck gold-titanium armor with it.

Hill, Spider-Man, and Ironheart all put their arms up, expecting the berserkers to do their job. With luck, the Six, who already surround them, won't seize the opportunity...

"HOLD IT!"

Mystria holds up her arms. Everyone stops.

Mystria assumes a position in front of Dr. Octopussy, and speaks. "As far as I can tell, this fight is over and altered reality. As a prelude to this battle-or whatever it's becoming-I hereby motion that we begin by pitting our two strongest warriors against one another. The Spartans did it all the time, after all, before conquering new land!"

"We're not Spartans," Huntress insists. "And clearly this trio HAS no strongest warrior." She looks around at the berserkers. "Unless, of course, one of these hot berserker boys wanted to fight in their stead, as a," she flaps her hair, "PREFERABLE patsy."

One of the peccary-riders appears to blush in his saddle. Below, his mount only grumbles to himself.

"It's not of manpower I speak." Mystria imagines herself into many shapes, before resuming her default one and holding it steady. "It's SOUL power. Or, to play the game like the Eternals do, REALITY power!"

"I," Hill mutters, "don't think I like where this is going..."

"Ironheart! You've the power to change reality as we know it in the palm of your hand!" She takes a defensive stance. "I hereby challenge you to a duel of imaginations!"

"This gauntlet is a prototype," Ironheart warns her. "It might not contain the Stone's power like the Infinity Gauntlet did all six Stones!"

"Well, unless you have a gauntlet with 'Reality Stone' on its resume," she claps her hands, and assumes another fighting stance, "THE NETHERFORCE IS ON, BITCHES!"

"Don't," Hill begs Ironheart. "This is insane."

"It might be necessary," Spider-Man says.

Ironheart sighs, and nods. "Fine; challenge accepted!"

Around, the Grandsons of Fenris applaud. Some of the Six seem excited.

"Alright," Huntress rubs her hands together, "a duel of imaginations! This'll be better than ballet!"

All around, everyone clears an arena for the two duelists. Spider-Man enjoys the berserkers' security for as long as it lasts.

"Remember," Hill implores Ironheart, "only defend yourself. Don't put on a show...as easy as it is to blush with an audience as dreamworthy as this."

"I have a plan," Ironheart reveals. "If it works, the Reality Stone will be safe in no time."

"As safe as it can be," Hill admits, "as much as none of the Infinity Stones should exist. I STILL don't know why Stark would use one to imitate a steam factory..."

The space is clear. The two duelists face one another. They demonstrate their weaponry. They bow to one another. They do an about-face, and walk five paces away from one another. They do another about-face, and face one another, weapons at the ready.

This will be intense. And without luck, the world will end...


	20. Chapter 20

The duelists are assembled. Ironheart's armed with her Reality Gauntlet. Mystria's armed with her reality-warping powers. At high noon, imaginary things will happen.

Around them, berserkers sit, and anticipate the first shots. Some of the lobo/berserkers have fallen asleep. Some of the barded peccaries have fallen asleep. Aback them, the humanoid berserkers yawn.

Above, the skiffs rest in some cliffs. They can't waste all their power waiting for an imaginary duel.

Dr. Octopussy sits beneath a tree, and applies makeup. With one of her prosthetic tentacles, she holds a handheld mirror.

For the coati/berserkers, Sandgirl uses her powers to compose sand castles. They seem amused.

FRIDAY messages KAREN. KAREN assures Spider-Man that a loan from the West Coast Avengers is on its way.

Now it's 11:55. The duelists stalk in circles around one another. Their audience clears space for them whenever they must. It's about to begin.

Mystria imagines herself into Beyonce Knowles. She's sitting at a breakfast table, in an unbuttoned blouse. Across the table, a man sits, reading his paper. He steals sneaky glaces, at her, over it.

Mystria takes off her glasses. She peels her shirt breasts back. She throws a napkin on the floor. A maid scurries over, to collect it. She drops it in Mystria's lap, and scurries back to her post.

Next thing, Mystria's wagging her curves all around a dirt road, while a pair of headlights from a car shine bright behind her.

Like Beyonce, she sings "Partition." Like the same, she's VERY mesmerizing...

She surfaces from beneath a dark stage, spotlighted in golden light, and shows off her cleavage, her ass, her legs, and the best parts of her body.

She kneels atop a piano, in a black bustier, and expresses hot yoga.

She hangs between two poles, in the dark, and expresses her emotions with her body.

In the dusk of a lavender sunset, her shadow lies atop a fancy chair, and expresses her sexuality with her body.

On a red-lit stage, she hangs from elastic cage bars, in a bikini, and slithers around them, as she's spotlighted with leopard-patterned light.

She's back at the breakfast table. The man retires his newspaper. Mystria sips from her teacup.

"CHALLENGE, BITCH," Mystria shrieks.

With her hand, Ironheart clenches the Reality Gauntlet. She closes her eyes...

Ironheart looks like Havana Brown. She creeps through a shadowy firehouse...

Drops of paint fall on drums. It's all over their tops. They're beaten. The paint drops dance atop them as they're played.

She creeps between many metal columns. Behind her, an army of men in leather creeps. They stand, and dance behinds her. She stands boldly, and sings "Warrior."

She wears a short golden robe, and twirls a practice sword.

She and her male army paint themselves black.

She stands boldly, hands painted black, in a hot pink Little Red Riding Hood cloak.

Ironheart's herself again. She takes an armed stance, faces Mystria, and arms all the weaponry in her exosuit.

Mystria loses her temper, and tries to turn Deseret into Jannah on Earth on her own.

Around them, the trees become fewer and barer. The sand and mountains become dunes. The lobo/berserkers become hyenas. The barded peccaries become barded gazelles...

"MYSTRIA," Dr. Octopussy screams, "NO! YOU'RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH!"

Through her sais, Elektra generates an electric bolt, and shoots it at Mystria. Mystria reimagines it into sand; it blows away in her illusory blast. Huntress shoots her with a bolt. The bolt becomes rubber, and bounces off her. She-Vulture shoots at her with twin rotary pistols. The bullets all turn into jasmine flowers moments before they strike Mystria.

Spider-Man looks at his arms. They're growing spikes. His incisors are getting too big to keep in his mouth. He's turning into an actual spider...

With the Reality Gauntlet, Ironheart counters Mystria's effort. All around, the lobo/berserkers become lobo/hyena hybrids. The barded peccaries become half-barded peccary/gazelle hybrids. Spider-Man's transformation into a spider is stubbed, and held. Half of the trees return. Half of the sand dunes vanish...

Onward, this plays out. Peter can feel his insides liquefying...

Below, the ground disintegrates. The dueling subconsciouses are eroding the earth.

"THIS VISION WILL FIX EVERYTHING," Mystria screams. "JUST LET US PROVE IT TO YOU!"

Ironheart can feel her armor cracking. She can feel her own bones giving...

In Ironheart's half of the distorted illusion, a portal opens. A shadowy figure slips through it.

Nearby, Ironheart's half of the distorted illusion is scarlet-tainted. From Mystria's stance, Ironheart's effort feels as if it's weakening. Over there, the portal appears to close. Mystria smiles. This is her chance to finish it. She puts everything she has into her imagination, and gives all of Deseret all she's got...

There's an explosion of white light. The noise dies, and the light dims...

The Six are standing in puddles of blood. Ironheart points at them, with a bare black hand, and laughs.

Dr. Octopussy fumbles through her gear for the vial of blood she kept her ex-husband's in. All around, the other Six do too, for their respective ex-husbands' blood. The vials aren't there. Sandgirl accidentally steps in some glass among the blood puddle she's in...glass that belonged to the vial she'd carried the blood in.

"WE DID NOT MENSTRUATE," Elektra screams. "THIS BLOOD IS OUR HUSBANDS'!"

"Oh no," Huntress gasps, "Mystria!"

All turn towards where Mystria stood. All that remains of her is a puddle of blood, the glass shards of the vial it was in, shreds of her cape, and an upside-down goldfish bowl.

The surviving Six bow their heads, and take a knee. Elektra lays down her sais. She-Vulture surrounds herself in her wings. Huntress lays down her crossbow...which slowly transforms back into a repeating rifle.

All around, some sort of scarlet-tainted illusion mends all the illusory damage both Mystria and the Reality Stone inflicted on the surrounding landscape, and on the bystanders. Spider-Man's body goes back to the way it was-only spider senses, and no spider appendages.

Where Ironheart was standing, a scarlet cloud vanishes. In its place, Scarlet Witch stands.

KAREN confirms, to Spider-Man, that she's the "loan from the West Coast Avengers" she spoke of earlier.

"Sorry I'm late," Scarlet Witch says in a thick Slavic accent. "Vis got arrested for trespassing."

"Where's the Reality Stone?!" Dr. Octopussy confronts the defending trio-now a quartet. "What've you done with it?!"

"Dr. Strange sent a courier," Ironheart explains. "Its ass is in Kamar-Taj. Some Masters of the Mystic Arts will meet there, and decide what to do with it. With luck, you Six-uh, FIVE now, will never see it again!"

Dr. Octopussy growls, and raises her prosthetic tentacles. She-Vulture shrieks, and spreads her wings. Huntress takes up her repeating rifle, and reloads it, via its lever-action. Elektra takes up her sais, and generates electricity through them.

"This isn't over," Dr. Octopussy sneers. "One way or another, we WILL have what we long for...and on top of that, you will all die defending what weak and pathetic biology you dare place on a pedestal!"

Ironheart arms her exosuit. Spider-Man arms his web-shooters. Hill loads her revolver. Scarlet Witch conjures a scarlet-tainted force field around them...

From the sky, a gunship shoots a ring of fire around Scarlet Witch's force field. Elsewhere, the berserkers take several steps back.

Scarlet Witch lowers her force field. On cybernetic wings, Jemma Simmons/Deathlok arrives, and lands among the defending quartet-now a quintet.

"Fantastic," Hill says, smiling. "SHIELD's going to help us win this after all."

"And now the field is even," Ironheart notes. "Five to five: at long last, both sides stand an equal chance of winning."

The berserkers come back, and surround everyone.

"Uh," Scarlet Witch mutters, "does someone want to tell me who or what those are, or what they want?"

"The Six killed a she-wolf," Spider-Man answers conversationally. "They want revenge."

Scarlet Witch seems dumbfounded. "The things boys will do for girls..."

"Is that why you love a synthezoid," Ironheart asks her, "instead of a real boy?"

Scarlet Witch gives her a sinister look.

Finally assembled, the two sides fight. The berserkers wait nearby, ready to defend Ironheart, Deathlok, Hill, Scarlet Witch, or Spider-Man if any of the above get in trouble.


	21. Chapter 21

Ironheart takes to the sky. She-Vulture spreads her wings, and chases her.

Up here, they dogfight. Inside the Ironheart armor, Riri commands FRIDAY to play her AC/DC playlist, an import from the future-the one Tony Stark, her mentor, always used to listen to while working.

The fight in the upper reaches of the sky. Below, the forest is barely decipherable through what few clouds are ever up here.

She-Vulture unleashes every round she's got. Ironheart deploys flares, does combat maneuvers, and dodges her first barrage of fire.

"Nerdy coward," She-Vulture grumbles. "And to think we support her kin's black supremacy movements!"

Back on the ground, Huntress empties her repeating rifle at Jemma Simmons/Deathlok. She deflects every bullet. Deathlok grins, turns her prosthetic arm into a rotary cannon, and empties it at Huntress. Somehow, she deflects every round.

Huntress sighs, and slides a bayonet onto the end of her repeater. Deathlok turns her arm into a crab claw-shaped sword. Huntress shouts, and charges her. Like a champ, Deathlok defends herself.

From the woods, the berserkers watch. They're ready to capture Huntress-regardless of whether she wins or loses.

Scarlet Witch levitates herself over the lake, undoes her spell, falls, and splashes down in the lake's depths. Via the xylem in the trees, and the water deep beneath the soil, Elektra uses both as conductors, and as highways into the lake. Once in the lake, all she's got to do is find Scarlet Witch. Once she has, she reassembles herself into a human, draws her sais, and charges Scarlet Witch.

The fight happens in slow-motion. Scarlet Witch creates a force-field around herself. Elektra gathers electricity from above the surface, and hits the force field with every electric blast she's got. The force field holds firm.

Maria Hill's still in the clearing. Sandgirl's got her cornered.

Sandgirl grins, summons many grains of sand, and assembles them into dual spears. Hill draws her revolver...and wishes she had two.

Sandgirl chuckles. "Well, Former Agent Hill," she twirls the spears, gathers more sand, and makes both bigger, "it seems the sands of your time have trickled their last."

Hill closes her eyes, and puts her hands up. "Wait!"

Sandgirl stops. To each side, her spears drip sand, and become thinner.

"Compared to your other partners," Hill praises her, "you haven't been as involved in their plot as them. If you approach me right, maybe I can help you make a deal with SHIELD."

Sandgirl hesitates.

"Please," Hill begs. "I don't think you're as bad as they are."

She still hesitates. But she releases her spears; they disintegrate when they hit the ground. Hill holsters her revolver. Side-by-side, they take a walk through the woods.

"I"m all ears," Sandgirl says. "Fill them like post holes, lest my sand does."

Through the Utah Arches, Spider-Man swings. For some reason, it feels GREAT to be normal-sized again...even if he is just a teenage nerd.

Dr. Octopussy swings from her prosthetic tentacles, and chases after him. She will stop at nothing to avenge herself and Mystria...for lack of the Reality Stone, or anything else with which she or the surviving Six could use to realize their ex-husbands' vision.

Spider-Man's always dreamed of swinging through the Arches-preferably from their highest points. And now he gets to do it while fighting one of the most formidable villainesses of his career.

"You were close, Spider-Man," she shouts, "but no ink! You'll be like a worm in my tentacles in no time!"

O, how Peter would love to still be like a mite in Liz's navel... But now's not the time for that; Dr. Octopussy isn't stopping herself.


	22. Chapter 22

Ironheart has fallen. Riri hangs from a parachute. Below her, the ground is still many thousands of feet down. And She-Vulture is far from having given up.

Like a real vulture, She-Vulture flies in circles around the parachuting Riri. She seems helpless to defend herself.

"You're a kebab of carrion to me now, Ironheart," she sneers. "With your head on a platter, I will pass on to my Jewish princess foremothers, in whose spoiled company I will then feel no shame!"

Riri moans. "Just kill me already, JAP!"

Jemma Simmons/Deathlok is hung upside down from two trees. Huntress takes her repeating rifle, and beats her with it. Deathlok forces herself to take it like a man. At least she's a more tolerant man that her late husband, Leo Fitz, ever was...

"Hate to do this to you, Deathlok." Huntress screams, and keeps beating Deathlok with the repeater. "But you are a once-in-a-lifetime trophy. You're certainly big game that'd make your late husband look like a dwarf."

Deathlok narrows her eye. Somehow, she WILL get out of this mess, and see to it that Huntress becomes butchered kosher long pork in her own Jewish smokehouse.

In the woods, the berserkers silently stalk Huntress. They're just about ready to claim her as their own...

Over the lake, a dark and heavy cloud hovers. Many, many streaks of lightning connect the sky to the lake surface. Their electromagnetism prompts a trio of maelstroms, all in a triangle. Underwater, they're really gears in an engine.

Underwater, the maelstroms look like a trio of cyclones. Any fish that get caught in them probably swim away regretting it...if they figure out how to escape them.

Scarlet Witch is tied up, and stuck right in the center between the three maelstroms. She's lost her sense of balance. She's nearly lost focus. She's powerless without the difference between reality and fantasy...

Elektra happily sits in an underwater chair on the lake's rocky bottom. She sits with both of her bare legs bowed, and her feet next to one another on the edge of the seat. She holds her sais in her hands, still generating electricity through them. She's powering the lightning through them.

A trout swims past her face. With a sole sai, she spears the trout in mid-water. She carefully transfers the other sai to her other hand, pulls the dead fish off the sai, and eats its flesh straight off its skeleton, while watching Scarlet Witch spin like a gyroscope between the three water spouts. If only Quicksilver could see his twin sister now.

"I'm just like a charbroiled Serb hanging from a power line," Elektra admits. "I'm stealing electricity!"

Maria Hill and Sandgirl walk through the woods. At any moment now, Hill will introduce Sandgirl to a likely job with SHIELD.

"I don't know about this, Ms. Hill," Sandgirl laments. "SHIELD isn't always good to the world."

"They mean to be," Hill tells her. "I'd know."

"O I'm sure you would. And yet...how many SHIELD agents are Arabian, exactly."

"They recruit from everywhere. Many potential candidates in Afroasia are assessed every year."

"I don't doubt. But has an Arab ever been the _director_ of SHIELD?"

Hill gapes. "Getting picky, are we, Ms. Marya?"

"This is economics, Ms. Hill. I must ALWAYS push my luck when I feel like it."

"Well keep in mind, I'm not doing this to reward you for what you've done for the Sacrilegious Six. I'm doing this to try and help rehabilitate and redeem you. I believe in you. I just need you to keep in mind that there are plenty of SHIELD agents out there who aren't half as optimistic."

Dr. Octopussy's got Spider-Man trapped on a butte. And from down here, she can see that Spidey's got a VERY nice butt on that butte.

Spider-Man shoots webs at his besieger. Dr. Octopussy either bats them away with her octopus prosthetics, or makes devious use of them.

Spider-Man will run out of webbing soon. He needs an ace in the hole to play...

"You're mine now, Spidey," she sneers. "You can't shrink yourself out of this one!"

Spider-Man holds his high ground...as useless as it's about to become. Dr. Octopussy will surely end him, if the Sacrilegious Six don't...


	23. Chapter 23

With neural implants, Riri summons her developing Iron Platoon; a work in progress. Airborne prosthetics surround She-Vulture, and take her vulture harness apart, one piece at a time.

"Well, She-Vulture," Riri says, still hanging from her parachute, smiling, "looks like you don't know the nuts and bolts of staying airborne!"

The harness is gone. Trachtenberg starts falling.

The Iron Platoon's prosthetics surround her, and create a cocoon of gold-titanium around her. Soon, she's trapped in one of Riri's exosuits. Via her neural implants, Riri elevates Trachtenberg up to where she is in her chute-fall. She caresses Trachtenberg's "helmet" with her ebony hand, and grins.

"Don't be so glum, dear Jewish princess. Life in the Raft isn't as bad as you think. It beats being dead. And it beats being duped by spoiled Brooklyn Jews into thinking that you're destined to become anyone more than just another little human in Earth's more-than-dominating population of them."

With that, Riri commands FRIDAY to plot a flight path to the Raft. And with that, the prison transport/exosuit flies away, leaving Riri to finish her parachuting to the ground in peace.

Below, college students are playing an intramural game of soccer, on the grounds of Deseret University. Waiting for either team to score is just about monotonous...

Lo and behold, Riri's parachute lands on the fifty-yard line. Suddenly, the enrollment could care less about the game. They surround Riri, and sing praises to her epic aeronautics-as they'd call it. Riri's scared; most of the enrollment here is white-and therefore, less likely very receptive of a black girl-even if she is smart and popular...and not to mention Ironheart...

All around the referees blow whistles and throw flags, demanding that the game be restarted professionally. But you know, every time you think a college student has figured out what he needs to do to get his life in order...he pulls just one more stunt that makes you wonder just how progressively evolving he really is...

In the forest, Simmons/Deathlok takes Huntress's lever-action rifle by the barrel, and swings it against the trunk of a pine tree. Its buttstock shatters to splinters.

Huntress watches in despair, as the lever of her ex-rifle's lever action ricochets across the ground, and into the undergrowth. She watches in even more despair as Deathlok takes the late rifle's barrel in both her hands-the birth one and the prosthetic-holds it just behind her neck, powers her prosthetic arm, and bends the barrel into the shape of a horseshoe.

Kershen screams in rage. Deathlok sighs, and hits her over the head with the bent rifle barrel. She blinks, falls over, and loses consciousness. Deathlok stands over her, grins, and kisses the bend in the barrel.

At long last, the berserkers arise from the forest. They surround Kershen. The lobo/berserkers are licking their chops. The coati/berserkers arrive with iron-forged chains, and deviously wrap Kershen up in them.

With this, Deathlok bows out. A badger/berserker brings her a sack of gold coins, and takes his leave.

Chanting excitedly, the berserkers take Kershen to Ulvgaard with them. They've got her on a human-sized silver platter. At long last, they've attained revenge for their fallen she-wolf. As harsh as this is, it is more peaceful that killing the rest of the Sacrilegious Six.

They take her to the body forge. They leave her in the chamber, and wait outside.

Inside, the smiths remove her clothing. Beneath her intimates, they find many tattoos that canonize her perpetual Jewish faith and heritage. They also find diamond, sapphire, silver, and pearl jewelry-all with Jewish-themed designs, of course. The smiths smile, chuckle, and discard all this Jewish memorabilia.

They put Kershen in the forge. She's waking up. She barely gets a chance to scream before the smiths seal her inside. They activate the forge, step back, and wait.

Outside, the other berserkers anticipate. They can't wait to behold the majesty of the brand new Kershen...whatever her post-rebirth name is.

Inside, a gear in the forge automatically plucks a switch that rings a bell, signalling completion. The forge pops open. Steam overflows from it. It's tainted ginger.

A rugged redhead climbs from the body-forge. She's in the buff. Her eyes are grey. Her hair is curled.

"Welcome to Ulvgaard," the smith says, smiling, "Kara."

"Kara?!" She looks down at her new white body. She holds her new burgundy hair in her hands, gaping. "WHAT IN NIFLHEIM HATH THY DONE TO ME, YOU HONKIES?!" She brakes, and trembles. "Wait...why can I not say 'Niflheim?!"

The smiths laugh. "It is time to meet your new people, Kara."

They push her outside, as she is still in the buff. She seems confused.

And then, she sees the lobo pack, the coati pack, everyone who brought her here, and the thrill-seekers who live here. She looks around at them with big eyes. They're terrifying-yet dreamworthy. She's forgotten that she's naked.

Everyone laughs. Some of them make coy mating calls.

Frantic, Kara looks for one of her Star of David tattoos. It's an Asgardian one instead. She looks down...and realizes she's still naked. She holds her head in her hands, and screams in rage and despair.

As she does, her pupils narrow. The beast is in gestation within the berserker...

In the lake, Scarlet Witch is desperate for relief. She remembers Vision, her synthezoid boyfriend. She remembers her West Coast Avengers teammates. She finds reality, and imagines that Elektra doesn't have any powers.

With that, the water spouts disperse. The fish return from the shallows. Above, the lightning dies. The dark clouds clear, and there is sun over the lake again.

And now, Dijana is unconscious underwater. She'll drown when she wakes.

Scarlet Witch swims to her, and puts a spell around her. "Slinging" her, Scarlet Witch levitates herself from the lake, and floats away to West Coast Avengers HQ.

Dijana's sais sink to the bottom of the lake. Walleyes and bass swim past them, as if they were nothing.

On an airship in the sky over the Dakota Territory, Director Mackenzie, of SHIELD, shakes rookie Agent Marya's hand. Sandgirl is now a SHIELD agent trainee.

"You'll be on probation for a while," Mack tells her. "But if you make it without disappointing us, or world peace, we just might have better work for you to do."

"Thank you, Director," Marya says, smiling. "It's good to see that foreigners can still look an Arab in the eye without barfing."

Mack half-smiles. "We've got a telepathic dog named Cosmo on-board. Earlier this morning he deposited his breakfast in the rear hatch. You know how to clean that, I presume?"

Marya frowns, sighs, and seeks out the cleaning equipment. Seriously; it was just a figure of speech...

"Don't overthink it," Quake says, smiling. She leans against a pillar, with her arms crossed. "You're Sandgirl, after all. Just cake it in sand, and scoop it up."

Marya half-grins. "It's good to see you too, Quake."

"Call me Johnson. If I warm up to you, you can call me Daisy."

Slingshot shakes Maria Hill's hand, with one of her own prosthetic arms. "I hope you're not wrong about her, Maria. She can't shatter the planet to bits like Quake could, but she can sure bury it."

"I trust her," Hill admits. "But if I'm wrong, SHIELD can feel free to imprison me."

"Don't count on it. We, at least, know you're _bueno_."

With that, Hill takes up a parachute, opens a hatch, and leaps out of the airship. In a heartbeat, Slingshot uses her superspeed to close the hatch.

Through Ole McGee Canyon, a cowboy, Charley Russell Stamey, an ancestor of a musician named Dave Stamey, rides his mule through the canyon, plucking an instrument. On either side of him, his coworkers play their instruments; one sings backup during the choruses.

Their senses are fading. They don't suspect that a boy spider and a girl octopus are having at it, many yards above them, between the canyon walls.

Stan Lee straggles behind them, aback a jackass/pony hybrid. He doesn't seem to approve of the song that's being performed up ahead: "Old McGee Canyon."

"Aw," he complains, "my granny sang better songs than you old greenhorns!"

Atop, Spider-Man and Dr. Octopussy have their last stand. Both tire. But neither can reveal that. Spider-Man just needs a wide-open space.

In twelve decades, they'll make a movie called _Benji the Hunted_. If Peter could just see it, what he's about to do next could've been inspired by that movie's climax...

Spider-Man runs up a slope. He stops where it dead-ends at a drop-off. Octopussy is chasing him...but can't see him. KAREN activates his suit's virtual camouflage, and waits...

Dr. Octopussy arrives. She mistakes the rising slope for a flat-topped hill. With her prosthetic tentacles, she does cartwheels up it. She flies right over it, and high over the drop-off.

Still virtually camouflaged, Spider-Man watches her flight. Both her birth limbs and her tentacles flail to grab anything that might save her. Alas, there's nothing between her and the flat rocky ground her trajectory's taking her to.

Maintaining the camouflage, Spider-Man uses his wingsuit to catch up with her. He shoots her abs with a web, and uses his wingsuit as a parachute to slow her fall.

She hits bottom. Her octopuss harness is destroyed, and she breaks more than a few bones.

Spider-Man abandons his camouflage, and attends to her. He sprays her in the face with a blinding chemical-one that's only a little more refined than pepper spray.

Peter tells KAREN to message Hill and FRIDAY, and takes off his mask. Oseku is still moaning about her broken bones, her totaled tentacles, and the pain from the spray.

KAREN deploys the suit's medical protocol, and via Spider-Man, patches Oseku up the best they can. She'll need a hospital in the long-term...but hopefully that's SHIELD's problem now.

Peter bends over Oseku, smiling. "Close, Oseku," he reminds her, "but no webbing!"

"Shut up," Oseku sneers. "This WILL happen again. And next time..."

"If you didn't need a big airway, I'd SO web your mouth shut right now."

Oseku growls in rage. The fallen Dr. Octopussy has no choice but to wait for an ambulance...however forgiving it turns out to be.

Somewhere in the Atlantic, the Raft has three new inmates. Without powers, they're all kept in separate cells in the maximum block of the human wing.

On the upside, they won't get executed here. On the downside, Trachtenberg and Oseku are not in the mood to help Dijana escape...yet.

Months later, Dijana gets a letter from a strange sender. It bears a Greek-themed postage stamp. She opens and reads it.

_To my convincing imposter, _

_Well-done. I never would've thought to use my sais as vessels for channeling generated electricity. Heard you caused quite the natural ruckus in Deseret, with the lightning and the maelstroms and Scarlet Witch. _

_As impressive as you were, I still prefer the more manual means of sai-fighting. Because of your impression, I'm letting you off with a warning this time. But should you ever smother my image less honorably, I might not remain so elusive-OR merciful. _

_Good luck on better prospects when and if you get out of the Raft, _

_Elektra Natchios _

_P.S: if you're ever in Hell's Kitchen, stay the fuck away from the blind vigilante they call Daredevil. He's forever mine. _

Dijana sighs, and files the letter inside a brick in the wall of her cell. "Inspirational ninja," she admits. "Daredevil's no idea how lucky he is." She pauses. "I also didn't know she was from Greece. If I ever go back home to Bosnia, I just might look her up..."


	24. Chapter 24

In Oregon City, things are back to normal. Liz Allan is out of witness protection, and back at home with her black mother.

She and Lowell sit on a back porch, caressing each other. They seem happy. She still doesn't know he's a berserker. She still doesn't know he can turn into a blond-furred horse-tall lobo when he loses his temper.

From a _Daily Bugle_, they read the story (as the public knows it) of how the Sacrilegious Six fell trying to transform Mormon-populated Deseret into a Jannah on Earth in the names of their ex-husbands, whose blood they needed to do so. (The _Bugle_ version of the story, of course, is without the Reality Stone. The less life on Earth knows about the six most powerful objects in the universe, the better.) Liz seems to find the story amusing.

This edition of the Daily Bugle was edited by some broad named Betty Brant. Jonah Jameson, it seems, has moved on to other things-or died, just as likely...

(What are the odds, though, that he won't be reincarnated as Buffalo Bill Cody, in a fictional biography about Frank Hopkins's epic race in the Ocean of Fire across the Arabian Desert? Just speculating...

(But he won't get reincarnated as that in THIS story, of course. Buffalo Bill is only twenty-three years old now...)

Alas, as much as Liz loves the story, she sighs, and looks off in the sky opposite the sunset. She could swear while she was in witness protection, she had at least a few-maybe more-sex fantasies of Peter.

Lowell caresses her bare skin, and encourages her to forget about it. People have a lot of scary dreams while in witness protection.

Alas, she doesn't embrace Lowell's advances much more. She just keeps staring into the shadowy opposite of the sunset, towards Queens, where she left her heart...

Technically of course, her mother left her heart in Queens for her. But in 1869 Oregon City society, who can blame her?

Across the continent, Queens is back to normal. May Reilly is out of witness protection, and back in her Queens flat, living the cheap-yet-comfy life of a white peasant.

After a long and hopeless search, Lt. Stacy's men have found Peter, and returned him to his ex-aunt. Peter's missing person's case is over...and yet, Lt. Stacy sure is coming over to the Reilly flat a lot more often that Peter, at least, would have him. Peter can see he's not the only human male in Queens who's got a thing for Ms. Reilly's rack...

O, how Peter would love to defend his ex-aunt. But then, it's not like she'd ever prefer him over the relatively experienced, and uniformed, and badged, police lieutenant...

In Spider-Man's void, a new youth has risen from oblivion, and is now protecting the streets of the Big Apple in a costume alarmingly reminiscent of Parker's. No one knows that's not Peter in the suit; they're just glad their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is alive, and still on the neighborhood streets, keeping peace in the Big Apple wherever Lt. Stacy and his coworkers cannot.

In a black Latino neighborhood, a youth named Miles is always shirking commitments every time a local disaster unravels. And the local Morales family both enjoys and is plagued by a strained relationship with one of their youngest male relatives...

As much as Peter knows he shouldn't, he pays the old Stark estate a visit. It's still just as well-accommodated for as Peter remembers it. And yet, everything looks smaller, for some reason. The security is as intimidating as hell. And yet, for some reason, Peter's less scared of it than he was. He happily rushes up the front steps, and knocks on the front door.

He meets Morgan, for the first time since before his own missing person's report. They embrace. She tells him she's missed him. Peter doesn't verbally respond, but tries to keep up the illusion of love by embracing her better.

They lie on a float in her mother's pool. Peter keeps forgetting how happy he always is with Morgan.

Ms. Potts sneaks out onto the patio, with a pair of iced drinks. She's still in her work clothes. Peter cracks his eyes, and "eye-stalks" Morgan's mom. As much as he loves Morgan, her mom has STILL got it going on. She's all he wants, and he's waited for so long...

"Peter? Are you thirsty?"

They abandon the float, and sit on the top step of the pool steps. They drink their fruit drinks, and take turns suckling one another with them.

Every now and then, Peter steals a sneaky glance at Morgan's mom/Mr. Stark's widow, when she's changing, or otherwise closer to her will-be son-in-law that she probably should be. But even if Ms. Potts is elegant, Morgan is practically an exact clone of her mother. She's less physically mature, of course...but still basically the same exact person as Ms. Potts.

Seriously, it's as if she's not even Mr. Stark's daughter at all...


	25. Epilogue

A spider, no bigger than a woman's fingernail, leaps from limb to limb. It's still too young to generate silk. It appears to be enjoying itself. One day, he'll have these limbs connected in a fine netting of freshly-generated silk.

Flies will get caught in it. He won't need his beautiful captor to feed him anymore.

A glass bowl surrounds the wooden branch he lives on. Through it, a giant blonde woman, with blue eyes, peers inside. She watches the young spider mature. She smiles on the inside, and moans happily on the outside.

Her name is Silvija Sablinova. And she's rich...courtesy of the corporate successes of Silver Sable International.

"Crawl and climb, _malenki pauk_," she says, in a thick Slavic accent. "Soon your legacy will be a HELL of a lot more than Arachnida's gift to men...and women...with fly infestations."

_Silver Sable will return..._


End file.
